KIDS, DRUGS AND BUREAUCRATS

Four years ago a joint campaign was launched by the public and private
sectors to fight drug use by young people. The original vision of the
National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign -- the vision Congress signed up
for in backing it -- was focused and promising:

- - The best and brightest minds in advertising would provide strategic
counsel and advertising -- pro bono.

- - The federal government would provide close to $190 million per year to
purchase high-quality media exposure, thus providing consistent delivery of
hard-hitting ads to parents and children. In addition, $1 in free exposure
would be required for every federal dollar spent on media buys.

It was a good idea then, and it still is. But today, as Congress considers
reauthorization of the anti-drug campaign, its future is very much in
doubt. The program has fallen into a bureaucratic trap, and only strong
legislative action can get it out.

We in the Partnership for a Drug-Free America -- an organization whose work
has been augmented by the national media campaign -- were warned. Some in
Congress said putting large sums of money in any federal agency would
create a bureaucracy. Leaders in business shared painful experiences of
having private-sector practices strangled by Beltway processes, consultants
and political pressures.

Much of this has proven prophetic. Indeed, it appears the only chance
Congress now has to save this program is to legislatively fence out a
bureaucracy that has been eating the campaign alive and to mandate a return
to the campaign's original vision.

When the media campaign began in 1998, it had a remarkable impact in the
marketplace. Anti-drug messages were everywhere, and with a combination of
paid and free media exposure channeling hard-hitting messages over the
airwaves, the percentage of teenagers seeing or hearing anti-drug ads every
day jumped 41 percent in the first year. Key drug-related attitudes moved
in the right direction and, most important, teen drug use declined.

Then the tentacles of bureaucracy began creeping in. The Office of National
Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), which coordinates the paid media effort, spent
nearly $1 million to develop an overarching communications strategy for the
campaign. What resulted was an enormous, unproven theoretical construct for
the program. While consultants were paid handsomely for their advice,
parents and children paid dearly as the effort moved from its focused
beginning and gradually lost its way.

Despite the counsel of seasoned marketing professionals who volunteer their
time and talent to the partnership, campaign coordinators and consultants
disregarded lessons from the past and altered the original vision of the
campaign in unfathomable ways. Instead of focusing on a singular, proven
theme in all advertising (e.g., ads about the risk of drugs), they forced
dozens of themes into the advertising. Fulfilling the campaign's
theoretical design required the hiring of more than two dozen vendors and
subcontractors.

Eventually a bureaucracy with little to no experience in managing marketing
efforts of this size and scope took over -- the thing Congress feared most.
Early on, one business CEO described the campaign's burgeoning architecture
as an utter nightmare. As a marketing person and former CEO, I would have
to agree.

Last week ONDCP released new data and concluded the campaign has "flopped."
But well-respected scientists say that conclusion isn't supported by the
data, which actually say the media campaign appears to be having a positive
influence on parents and that teen drug use is unchanged. As for a
"finding" ONDCP emphasizes regarding exposure to the campaign and favorable
attitudes toward drugs, the report states: "This unlikely finding is best
interpreted as anomalous rather than as a basis for inferring negative
campaign effects." ONDCP's choice to spin the findings so negatively is
irresponsible.

We had early indications the campaign was getting off track back in 2000.
Recommendations such as having the ads speak to older kids, focusing the
campaign's messages and increasing spending to ensure those messages were
seen and heard consistently were shared with ONDCP. All have been ignored.

Steadily, as the campaign's resources have been consumed, fewer and fewer
dollars have been invested in the essence of the campaign's original
vision: media buys to deliver messages to parents and children. The
campaign's ad buying has been reduced from what should have been 100
percent of its original $195 million allocation to just $65 million for ads
aimed at parents and $65 million for children -- probably much less when
contractor fees and related costs are deducted. This means additional
exposure from the free media has also been drastically reduced. With fewer
messages being delivered to the target audience -- and with multiple themes
forced into the advertising -- is it any wonder the campaign has had a
negligible impact in the past two years?

Media-based drug education programs can work. Independent research verifies
this not only for anti-drug advertising but also for other focused,
research-based efforts. The problem with the National Youth Anti-Drug Media
Campaign is its grandiose, bureaucratized structure.

Since the media campaign began in 1998, adolescent drug use has declined,
but that decline has stalled over the past two years. Congress should give
this program a final chance to get its act together. We know it can work if
it's focused and the ads are tested. There's simply no more cost-effective
approach to educating millions of kids, generation after generation, about
the dangers of drugs, than via media-based education.