NEW ANTI-DRUG MESSAGES MAY GET THROUGH MEDIA MORASS

THE GOVERNMENT'S new anti-drug media campaign has come in for more than its
fair share of ridicule since it was announced several weeks ago. Critics
make two key points: First, that public service advertising doesn't work,
and second, that it is pointless to launch an ad campaign in the middle of
a cultural morass in which the content of many television shows, magazines
and commercials seems to promote the very lifestyle the ads seek to
persuade young people to renounce. Both points miss the mark.

Try telling Calvin Klein, Budweiser or any other product seeking a youth
market that advertising doesn't work. It's true that some public service
campaigns have failed, but the reason isn't that advertising is an
ineffective medium. It's because public service campaigns get extremely
limited exposure in the least desirable time slots and because messages
aren't always well-designed. (Ad directors aren't paid for their public
health efforts, and funds for market research and focus group testing are
usually not available.) In fact, the amount of time television networks
make available for public service ads has decreased considerably in recent
years, even though gross advertising time has increased.

With the anti-drug campaign, the government is trying a new approach:
actually buying the kind of quality ad placement an effective campaign
needs. The Office of Drug Policy and the many media partners who are
pledging to donate a like amount of prime advertising time deserve to be
commended for this innovation.

There is some evidence that public health campaigns can accomplish at least
modest goals when media companies become true partners in the effort,
helping to target ad time to the intended audience and making sure exposure
levels are sufficient. As part of an MTV / Kaiser Family Foundation
campaign to educate viewers on safer sex, MTV made a significant commitment
of top-quality air time.

In a survey of 500 of the more than 150,000 young people who received
written information through a toll-free telephone number listed in the ads,
18 percent said they had either gotten birth control for the first time or
switched methods, 61 percent said they had talked with their sexual partner
about safer sex issue and a third of those under 18 said they had spoken
with one of their parents about sexual issues after reading the materials.

We may be fighting an uphill battle with this campaign when much of the
content of MTV and other television networks is sexual in nature, only
rarely highlighting the need for safer sex. Research shows there is good
reason to be concerned about the impact of television on viewers. Study
after study on television violence, for example, shows that exposure to
increasing amounts of media violence can desensitize viewers, and encourage
aggressive behavior in some. With regard to sexual content, young people
increasingly cite television and movies as a place they get many of their
ideas about sex and relationships. And given what companies will pay for
product placement in movies these days, there is good reason to believe
that seeing attractive characters drink, smoke and use drugs has some
effect on young viewers.

But the substance of media content is and should be up to those who write
and produce it. Public health groups can help educate the public and work
with those in the media who care about the impact of their work, but beyond
that there is not much more they can do. And where are the critics of the
new anti-drug media campaign when public health groups try to draw
attention to the impact of TV shows and movies on young people? Too often
they are arguing that media just reflects reality; or that they grew up
watching violent cartoons and they never killed anyone; or that somehow the
First Amendment prohibits public health groups from even engaging media
producers and the public in this kind of a debate.

Rather than condemning this campaign on the questionable charge that
advertising is ineffective, or because it is a drop in an ocean of
problematic media messages, let's work to make public service advertising
time more widely available, improve the quality of the messages, and target
them to the audiences which most need to hear them. Let's also do
everything we can to help Hollywood's writers and producers understand and
address the importance of the content of their full-length programming.
Throwing up our hands in despair is silly when there is the possibility of
using media's power toward a positive end.

Examiner contributor Vicky Rideout is with the Henry J. Kaiser Family
Foundation in Menlo Park.

1998 San Francisco Examiner Page A 21

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)