Piaras Kelly PR – Public Relations in Ireland

I just happened to be surfing the net and checking out the latest soccer news on Sky Sports when I happen to notice a banner ad on the webpage. See below (if the ad isn’t visible please visit drugs.ie to view it):

As far as I am aware, this is part of the new drug awareness campaign designed to combat Ireland’s drug problem in light of the deaths of a number of young people recently. The Sunday Business Post reports that “interactive digital media, outdoor and indoor advertising will be used – in conjunction with a media strategy – to highlight the dangers of drugs, and to promote services to help users.“

After examining the banner ad though, I can’t help but think that the messaging fails to hit the bullseye for the target audience, in the same way I pointed out that the Road Safety Authority’s communications strategy was slightly off the mark. Ignoring the limited effectiveness of banner ads online, if you take the time to engage with the advertisement the three questions asked are reminiscent of South Park’s Mr Mackey‘s efforts to convince children that drugs should be avoided – “Drugs are bad m’kay!“.

I honestly cannot guess who these adverts are trying to educate.

Despite having referenced an excerpt from ‘Made To Stick‘ recently, I feel it’s worth bringing up again. The book’s authors discuss a anti-litter campaign developed by Dan Syrek, a leading researcher on litter in the United States. In ‘Made To Stick’, Chip Heath and Dan Heath outline the messaging behind one of Syrek’s successful campaigns – Don’t Mess With Texas. The original campaign prior to engaging Syrek featured anti-litter messages such as an advert “starring a cartoon owl who says, ‘Give a Hoot – Don’t Pollute.’”

As the authors point out:

“Syrek knew that this type of messaging wouldn’t solve Texas’s problem. In his view, those kinds of ads are just ‘preaching to the choir.’ What Texas needed to do was reach people who weren’t inclined to shed tears over roadside trash. The profile of the typical litterer in Texas was an eighteen to thirty-five year old, pickup driving male who liked sports and country music. He didn’t like authority and he wasn’t motivated by emotional associations with cuddly owls

‘We found that people who throw the stuff are real slobs,’ Syrek says. ‘You had to explain to them that what they were doing was littering.’ Syrek kept with him a photo of a macho looking man in a pickup truck. ‘This is our target market,’ he said. ‘We call him Bubba.’

…

Syrek knew that the best way to change Bubba’s behavior was to convince him that people like him did not litter. Based on his research, the Texas Department of Transportation approved a campaign built around the slogan ‘Don’t Mess With Texas.’

No blog post on drugs would be complete without Melle Mel and Grandmaster Flash’s song ‘White Lines‘ which was played in a Dublin nightclub recently, but the irony was lost on its patrons.

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