An ad is an ad

British government spent £1m (yes, one million) for the latest anti-cocaine TV campaign.

The ad, targeted at 15- to 18-year-olds, was first shown on December the 4^th night on Channel 4 and is run by the UK government’s campaign FRANK.

Now, this ad contains:

• Pablo, a talking dog. Sorry, even better: a dog’s talking ghost (or a ghost of a talking dog, who knows).

  He tells us how he died being used as a drug-mule to smuggle cocaine into the country.

• David Mitchell, giving voice to the dog.

• A lot of cool people snorting cocaine and acting like they came out from a Guy Richie’s movie.

  And must be said, the ‘would you spare a Stella?’ gag is a good one.

• A little bit of blood: the stabbed corpse of poor Pablo, a realistic heart on tachycardia, a bleeding nose.

• A smart drug movie editing, with regular voices on fast-forward.

• And finally, at the very end, FRANK helpline telephone number.

A few considerations

Being young-friendly is the main characteristic of FRANK, and this is OK, but let’s make a few simple considerations about this ad, and many others:

showing cocaine (or any other drug) and people doing it is a drug commercial.

It makes users feel like having a line.

Like when you’re watching a food programme and you start getting hungry.

Ads work with images, don’t they?

Drugs ads are just ads.

That’s how our mind gets them and how PRs sell them.

Stop asking why they don’t work (and anyway, the issue is kind of too deep to be solved with ads).

An average teenager that never did cocaine, after watching this ad is likely to go and try it, especially after hearing that guy in the club saying: ‘lots of people doing it here, Pablo!’.

Maybe hardcore images contributed to make drugs cool and didn’t work, but a mate enjoying his night out is not really showing ‘the dark side of cocaine’.

At the end, for a few seconds, they show the helpline telephone number.

Almost no one is going to call a helpline unless being in serious trouble.

Fortunately they also show their website, which is actually the heart of the campaign and was supposed to be the object of the ad.

Although this video is not as embarrassing as their previous one, appeared on websites months ago, was it really worth spending one million?

It is a lot of money for a talking dog.

Looking for the next ‘cannabis’ campaign in January.

FRANK

FRANK is the UK government’s national drug awareness campaign, established in 2003.

Not called ‘anti-drug’ campaign any more, it is part of the UK’s ‘drug strategy‘ that “aims to restrict the supply of illegal drugs and reduce the demand for them”.

As the old ‘just say no’ ads revealed themselves being quite useless, they realised that a little bit more of communication skills were needed to break through the complex dynamics of the drug culture.

Do you remember that scene in ‘Fear and Loathing’ where the officers say that a roach is called so “because it resembles a cockroach”? Nothing has changed:

“The name FRANK also fits with the nicknames and code words used so much in drugs culture, (i.e. cocaine being known as charlie, heroin as horse etc). FRANK becomes another bit of lingo in the world of druggish things” it is said on the Meet Frank booklet.

(Take a look also to their Campaign Presentation.)

The ‘umbrella’

“FRANK is an umbrella under which we all work together in informing people about the dangers of drugs”, the booklet says.

This ‘umbrella campaign’ targets teenagers and takes advantage of the dynamics created by fashion, DIY, and social networking.

“FRANK’s basically a brand, a communications tool” it is said in the booklet. “So when you see a TV ad for FRANK, it’s a TV ad for you”.

They hired graphic designers, they made their logo, their stickers, their t-shirts, and a weird website.

What they were thinking when they did that website to me is still a mystery.

If their aim was to keep teenagers away from drugs they are slightly on the wrong track.

If their aim was to create a drug awareness, well, they should start being aware themselves before spreading random drug information.

The website

The brand new loading animation is a line of cocaine. Kind of junkie graphics.

Then you have the A-Z of drugs, because FRANK is not going to judge you or punish you, he will give you help and believable information on drugs.

So he tells you that:

“‘Street’ heroin sold as ‘brown’ is sometimes used by clubbers as a chill out after a big night out.”

Sounds nice, isn’t it? Why not try it? Chill out a while..

Later it also says that “Heroin is highly addictive.” Oh really?

Just an addictive painkiller, according to FRANK.

The funniest thing on the whole website is the spliff pinball.

As ‘Cannabis’ is scheduled to be reclassified to a class B drug in January 2009, FRANK is quite strict on this issue and keeps saying that it leads you to schizophrenia.

Frank’s cannabis page has already suffered a number of critiques last year that pointed out how the information given are often misleading and inaccurate.

UKCIA rightly says: “ If you can’t trust them to tell the truth about cannabis, how can you trust them to tell the truth about anything?”

In fact “FRANK only reflects Government drugs policy”, as said on the booklet.

Maybe someone should tell FRANK that problems must be solved at their origin, not by stemming the consequences.