CYNICAL OR SILLY, THESE ADS WILL FRY YOUR BRAIN

BEING in the newspaper business, I certainly have no objections to
advertising. I understand the need for radio and TV spots. I'm even
tolerant toward those occasional media battles designed to win our hearts
and minds. On the other hand, I find two of the current campaigns fairly
despicable, and a huge waste of money, respectively. In the first, taken
from radio and TV, exasperated voices intone, ``Working people get stuck
paying all the taxes.''

``I think Washington's answer to everything is new taxes.''

``They're just basically milking that cash cow one more time. There's got
to be some other way.''

``Big taxes and government just aren't the way to go. The government is too
much involved in our lives as it is.''

``When are they going to get the message?''

``I don't know.'' End spot.

This message, playing throughout the Bay Area, is, pick one:

A. Newt Gingrich, recounting the glory days of the ``Contract With America.''

B. Testimony from the IRS reform bill hearings.

C. The tobacco industry discovering a new toehold.

D. President Reagan, recalling a nightmare involving Tip O'Neill and a
wheelbarrow full of tax bills.

OK, next spot. This ad is running in newspapers and on TV. In the newspaper
version, an apparently irritated young woman is holding a skillet with
which she has smashed an egg. On TV, being TV, the woman is swinging the
skillet wildly, smashing the egg, and quite possibly the toast and orange
marmalade.

THE message from this advertisement is:

A. Damn! Out of coffee again!

B. The little dog laughed to see such sport and the dish ran away with the
spoon.

C. This is what happens to your brain on drugs.

If you answered C. to both questions, go to the front of the class.

Only at the end of the ``big government'' spot do we hear that it has been
brought to us courtesy of the nation's largest tobacco companies, which
have spent millions in recent weeks to recast the proposed national
settlement on tobacco-related health costs as a regressive tax on working
families.

Since working-class families and the poor suffer disproportionately from
tobacco-related illnesses, this campaign seems particularly cynical and
disingenuous. But casting a catastrophic national health problem as ``big
government tax and spend'' appears to be working. Just witness the recent
death of the McCain bill in the U.S. Senate.

The campaign has been running over several months in other states, but only
recently in California, said a spokesman for BSMG Worldwide, the ad agency
that is handling the tobacco industry's perspective.

I find it reprehensible.

THE anti-drug spot, meanwhile, was the kickoff of a new $2 billion
advertising campaign President Clinton said is ``designed to knock America
upside the head and get America's attention.''

And it would be wonderful indeed to find an effective way to turn young
people away from drugs. But the first ad, at least, is very similar to the
``this is your brain on drugs'' campaign of a few years ago. The only
difference I see is that this time around, the egg is smashed, rather than
fried.

The previous campaign became the butt of jokes and T-shirt slogans from
coast to coast. Other than that, young people paid little attention.

``It's the kind of strategy that makes everyone feel like something is
being done on the problem,'' said Lawrence Wallack, a professor of public
health at the University of California-Berkeley. ``Everybody is happy, but
it is just not sufficient to have an impact on the problem.''

Indeed, you just have to wonder how much counseling and treatment you could
buy for $2 billion. Or how many school music and arts programs you could
restore, or how many after-school and summer recreation programs you could
fund. Two billion dollars should translate into many programs that could
actually make a difference.

Enough with the eggs already!

Write Jim Trotter at the San Jose Mercury News, 750 Ridder Park Drive, San
Jose, Calif. 95190; call (408) 920-5024 or send e-mail to
jtrotter@sjmercury.com .

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski