U.S. CRAFTS ANTI-DRUG MESSAGE

NEW YORK -- Parents know how difficult it is to get teenagers to listen.
Compound that with the temptations that abound for teen drug and alcohol
abuse and parents can have a daunting problem on their hands.

But now, they're getting parenting tips from an unlikely source: the U.S.
government.

As part of its $200 million anti-drug program, the White House Office of
National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has created a new campaign of ads. For
the first time, ONDCP's anti-drug ads address parents and friends rather
than the potential user.

Previous ads warning of the physical and mental damage from drug use may
have gone unnoticed by the users they targeted.

"Kids consider themselves immortal, so that limits how much they will be
receptive to ads about drug use affecting health," says Tom Riley, public
affairs director of ONDCP. "These are designed to give people permission to
do something. This gets other people into the dialogue."

As measured by Ad Track, USA TODAY's weekly consumer poll, the ads are a hit
with young adults. Even more impressive, the ads also resonate just as much
with middle-aged folks old enough to be their parents.

The ads call on friends and families to help through early intervention. In
one, a girl's party night plays in reverse, rewinding from its end --
drugged out and in trouble -- to that morning when she was walking out of
her home. When it restarts, the girl's mother stops her and says they need
to talk.

In another ad, a girl stands on a dock by a lake watching a friend struggle
in the water. The ad points out that a true friend would help a friend in
distress.

In a third ad, viewers see a husband and wife scream, argue and slam doors.
But then they find out that the couple is not fighting -- they are preparing
for confronting their child over drug use.

In Ad Track, the ads were popular all around. Typically, such tough topics
are unpopular, but of those familiar with the campaign, 34% like the ads "a
lot." That's well above Ad Track's 21% average.

The ads were most popular with both young adults ages 18 to 24 and with the
40-to-49 crowd: 39% of each group like the ads "a lot."

"The subject matter hit home because it keyed into the values, attitudes and
lifestyles of each of the generations it was trying to target," says Ann
Fishman, president of Generational Targeted Marketing, a firm that monitors
consumer trends across five generational cohorts.

Fishman says that young viewers like the ads because the makers of the ads
appear to "understand their real lives." People in their 40s like the ads
because "they want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, no
matter what."

Ogilvy & Mather in New York created the ad that shows a youth drowning, and
Foote Cone & Belding in New York made the other two.

Unlike most ads, the success of ONDCP's ads can't be measured in sales. But
according to the University of Michigan's annual Monitoring the Future
study, use of various illicit drugs by young people in 2003 was down 11%
from 2001.

"The good news is they are all headed down in the right direction," says Bob
Denniston, ONDCP's media campaign director.

The agency's messages have not always been popular. Most controversial were
ads just after the Sept. 11 attacks that linked drug use to helping finance
terrorism.

Additionally, some taxpayers have complained about the agency now buying ad
time in popular programming, including the Super Bowl, rather than using
pro-bono advertising services. In the past, the Partnership for a Drug-Free
America (PDFA), a non-profit anti-drug coalition, had rallied agencies to
donate creative ideas and media outlets to donate ad space.

Since 1998, ONDCP and PDFA have worked jointly on creative ideas. And ad
placement is now backed by a budget matched dollar-for-dollar by media
outlets. Under the deal this year, ONDCP's $110 million ad spending will
bring $220 million worth of media ad time.

The ad program has been under fire most recently for continued use of ad
agency Ogilvy & Mather, which is the subject of a federal investigation. In
January, an 11-count indictment charged that the agency's former director of
finance, Thomas Early, and former Ogilvy executive Shona Seifert
participated in an "extensive scheme to defraud the United States government
by falsely and fraudulently inflating" labor costs in 1999.

ONDCP will begin the hunt for new agencies in the next several weeks, but,
Riley says, "The people we've worked with have nothing to do with any of
this."