GET REAL - THIS MESSAGE IS LOST

Shock advertising has failed to change young people's behavior, despite the
impact of seeing a boy zipped into a bodybag after overdosing, or hitman
Chopper Read calling drink drivers "maggots", according to experts.

Former advertising agency executive turned freelance creative consultant
Ted Horton said that, despite the shock tactics employed by anti-smoking
and road safety campaigners, more young people had taken up smoking,
particularly girls, and many young people were still dying on the roads.

Further, the latest Tough on Drugs campaign commercials were unlikely to
prompt a decline in youth drug abuse, given the fact young people rebelled
against such messages. Chopper Read was being used to appeal to such
rebellion but, rather than changing young people's behavior, merely "stands
the chance of turning him into an anti-hero".

"By talking about a problem all the time it merely accelerates the
problem," the Melbourne-based Mr Horton said. "Telling (young people) it's
wrong is not the answer."

Mr Horton said he was sympathetic with the aims of many advertising
agencies, but often their motivation was kudos or industry awards. "A lot
of the time these ads serve the interests of the advertising agency more
than they serve the (intended) end beneficiary."

Governments would have a bigger impact on the drugs problem if they made
treatment and counselling services free and immediately accessible to all,
Mr Horton said.

But a senior Melbourne advertising executive, who declined to be named
because his son has battled heroin addiction, said the impact of the latest
ads should not be judged for several months. "The drug situation is
certainly getting worse and there's no point being too damn placid about
it," he said.

Open Family Australia youth worker Les Twentyman said the Tough on Drugs
ads did not qualify as shock advertising, because they looked like
"Neighbours or Home and Away advertising made by middle-class advertising
agencies".

More potent was a graphic advertisement made by Open Family in conjunction
with Melbourne company Tribal Productions, which depicts 16-year-old
Danielle, a real Melbourne girl with a drug problem.

The teenager is shown crying and talking about her heroin addiction. She
tells the interviewer: "I just wish there was one morning, one morning
where I could wake up and not feel sore."

In comparison to the millions of dollars spent on the bodybag
advertisement, "we could have let the government have our ads for less than
$100,000", Mr Twentyman said.

A youth worker whose term on the Prime Minister's National Council on Drugs
was not renewed, Wesley Noffs, said the Tough on Drugs advertising was only
generating "fear and loathing" and would not work because it failed to
project hope.