Fear Appeals: Their Lost Appeal in the Fight Against Meth Tiffany King Professor Bell CMMU 4665

September 27, 2010

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Abstract Advertising efforts containing anti-drug campaigns have always predominantly been geared towards the younger generations. As well they should be, children and youth are vulnerable and still very impressionable. Though finding a way to persuade a-know-it-all teen into intelligent and logical thinking is not always an easy task. Several anti-drug campaigns have put together some very in your face advertisements using fear appeal and imagery. First I will delve into advertising history followed by a short synapses of anti-drug campaigns and their history. Then, I will discuss the success that these types of campaigns have had. Then I will discuss the two anti-drug advertisements I chose and where they might have gone wrong. Finally I will expound on how all too many anti-drug campaigns have focused predominately on using fear based techniques thus creating desensitization to the preventative persuasive effort against meth use.

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Almost every piece of visual stimuli we encounter in a days time is some sort of persuasive effort to get society to engage in certain behaviors, thoughts or attitudes. Anti-drug campaigns fight to gain societal consensus (especially targeting the younger generations) that drugs are a life-destroying epidemic and we should all steer clear of them or else their negative effects will inevitably haunt us. Different styles of persuasive-behavior-promotingadvertisements have different affects on different people in differing situations. The job of the advertiser is to find the audiences vulnerability and play on that, be it fears, insecurities, ego, etc. Then the advertiser suggests that the way to reduce the dissonance or fear that has been presented is to accept and act on the product in question, which in this case is the act of not using meth. There have been many anti-drug campaign tactics utilized over the years. However, too many years of anti-drug campaigns have focused on using extreme fear appeals and audience desensitization has occurred. Thus it is time to begin a new chapter in regards to the types of appeals used in order to keep getting positive results in the fight against meth. History of Advertising and Anti-Drug Campaigns Advertising has been around since before the 1900s and has seen a lot of change since then. Originally advertising, lacking mass communication abilities, was taken care of face-toface, door-to-door (Bell, lecture 8-30-10). Then came the invention of the newspaper that heralded the ability to mass produce print ads and have them seen by many people at very different times (8-30-10). Papers gave way to mass communication such as radio and television which was followed by the introduction of internet capabilities (8-30-10). Those were the means of advertising. The techniques of advertising and persuasion can be considered rhetoric,

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which also has revolutionized conceptuality over time. Rhetoric dates back to the days of Aristotle. It has had a long time to change and diversify and that it has. Theory based approaches have been established based on studies conducted throughout time that indicate some approaches to persuasive appeals are more effective than others. Thus inevitable alteration due to time and revolutionary processes involving natural selection have put the content of ads and their means of distribution where they are today. Anti-drug campaigns started as early as 1980s publicly, but were coined in the 1970s by the social psychology professor Dr. Richard Evans (drugfreeworld.org, 9-20-10). Intervention at childhood was the best time to intervene. Evidence suggests that if a child can make it until the age of 21 without using or even trying drugs, that childs chance of remaining drug free for the rest of their life is almost guaranteed (Basisonline, 2009). Nancy Regan was the first to jump aboard proclaiming that this type of effort was the cure all end all for drug abuse in America (920-10). Just Say No was the slogan that surfaced at one of Reagans first stops at an elementary school when she was asked by a little girl what she should do when encountered with drugs (9-20-10). Reagans response was just say no, thus the slogan took hold. Admittedly it was a catchy slogan, for a short time. I remember growing up with the D.A.R.E. program and there was always a police officer at the school, he was the one running the program. There was a graduation ceremony and of course, the DARE Bear. Now, in retrospect I would have to say that was nerdy, very nerdy. I cant believe something as un-cool as cops and big fuzzy bears were able to attract, not only the attention that they did, but to elicit success, if any at all. Surprising as it may sound, drug use dropped among students of all

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ages rather significantly (9-20-10). What is coined the social inoculation model was at work during these campaigns which, though costly, seemed to show success in most everyones opinion. Success of Meth Campaigns Today A lot of advertising theory is coupled with concepts found within the study of psychology. It has become a universal idea that knowledge, attitudes, and behavior influence each other (Baker, 1991). In the older drug campaign efforts it was assumed that simply provoking negative thoughts about drugs would quickly affect attitude and drug use would decrease (Baker, 1991). Today there seems to be a bit more complexity involving contextual factors than there might have been in the early 80s. Baker suggests that there are more attitudes involved than just the one about the drug itself (1991). People have an attitude about ones self (low self esteem), authority figures and their peers, and these attitudes all influence their final actions (1991). Thus, the goal must ultimately be to alter the attitudes of the audience in order to change their behavior. How should one go about this feat? Apparently for quite some time the answer was fear appeal. The first commercial I remember was the one with the egg, this is your brain on drugs. As a child of the 80s I can say that we were concerned about intelligence levels and dead brain cells. At some point in time unfortunately, that concern faded away and along came the shallow, appearance-reliant teenager. With the changing trends, all being indicative of outward-beauty dependence for social acceptance, came the change in trends of anti-drug campaigns. Anti-drug campaign ads [anti-meth campaigns for the purpose of this paper]

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became focused solely on the effects of meth on personal hygiene and appearance. It was a highly accepted belief, and therefore theory, that targeting the decaying outward appearance of teens using meth would have direct implications on the number of users that pick up every year. This silly assumption was just that, an assumption. Thomas Seibel, in February of 2005, created what is known as the Montana Meth Project (basisonline, 2006). Seibel started this campaign to raise awareness of the consequences associated with using meth and he focused on aiming the ads at teenagers (2006). His hopes were that these ads would 1) initiate conversations between parents and kids, 2) stigmatize the use of meth use like tobacco use once was, and 3) to increase the perceived risk and decrease the perceived gain of using the drug (2009). There were an enormous amount of those ads that were in the media: 45,000 television ads, 35,000 radio ads, 10,000 print ads, and 1000 billboard ads (Anderson, 2009). These ads reached an estimated 7090% of kids three times per week (2009). There may have been errors in the statistical data collected in addition to the fact that rating successful recovery or abstinence is quite ambiguous. After the launch of the MMP in September of 2005, seven other states adopted their own versions of anti-meth projects because they had a high belief in their success rate (2009). About half the sources claim that there was no significant behavioral change regarding addiction and the other half claim that the 2-3 million dollars a year pumped into the MMP was worth every penny (Anderson, 2009). The NCJRS claims that there are four determining factors associated with successful anti-drug campaigns (NCJRS, 2008). They claim that private corporations pay big money to

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advertise and that they do it because it yields results (2008). Those are as follows: strong legislative support, solid scientific research, free advertising in conjunction with private partners, and participation by media corporations, civic leaders, volunteers, education, prevention and the like (2008). Their stats suggest that due to anti-drug campaigns even pot use has decreased some 25% among students, which is a deterrent for later use in life (2008). My Meth Ads Having sifted through numerous studies and other evidence I concur with the opposite side and that is that anti-drug campaigns of the present caliber are just not doing their job. Take the ad that exclaims 15 Bucks For Sex Isnt Normal. But On Meth It Is for example. This ad in particular should strike a fearful note in my mind although somehow, it does not. The first time that I saw one of the MMP ads I was shocked, at that point it made me feel filthy and wrong. That was my first encounter with the ad but few subsequent encounters proved to be this successful in evoking enough emotional appeal to even make me stop to think about the advertisement. In fact, one survey indicates that kids were under the impression that meth was a party drug and that had no fear at all (Anderson, 2009). Mark Anderson, an economics student at the University of Washington, writes that MMP claims usage was down by 45% since 2005 due to their collective efforts (2009). Anderson says that is just simply not true, that poor methodology is to blame for numbers turning up as such and he attributes the decrease in use to the already present trend of decline in use (2009).

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The other ad I pulled depicts Cookie Monster holding a gun robbing someone and says, This Is Not Normal. On Meth It Is. Personally I find this ad makes a whole lot more sense to me. The silly and retarded things that people on meth do need to be made a mockery out of. I would be more apt to not want to look silly than to have one little sore on my mouth, only because it doesnt seem as though that would ever really happen. For one psychological reason or another, humor about meth deters me far more than fear about insufficient social appearance. I am sure in any event I have suffered the much spoken of desensitization that a lot of others have experienced regarding anti-meth campaigns. Conclusion Regarding the Use of Fear Appeals The overuse of fear appeals has brought itself right to a dead end where they may never have the capacity to work as they once did. Fear has been utilized as a technique since the late 1990s in trying to deter kids from using meth, even once. Their days were numbered however and it is time to embark on a new tactic. Humor may shockingly be the way to combat what is known as the meth epidemic. What will probably never work again is the approach that screams that the deterioration of ones appearance and the fear of losing it, the teeth, the sores, the shrunken skin that falls over ones bones, is inevitable such that using meth miraculously is no longer an option.

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References

Anderson, D.M. (2009). Does information matter? the effect of the meth project on meth use among youths . Unpublished manuscript, Department of Economics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. Retrieved from http://students.washington.edu/dma7/MethWorkingPaper_

Baker, Initials. (1991). The persuasion handbook: developments in theory and practice. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Basisonline.org. (2006, February 26). With Scenes of Blood and Pain, Ads Battle Methamphetamine in Montana. The New York Times, p. 18.

Bell, R. (2010). History and advertising. Proceedings of the Lecture 830-10 Denver: UC Denver.

National Crime Justice Reference Service, (2008). What works: effective public health responses to drug use (NCJ 22 17 41). Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. Retrieved from http://www.ncjrs.gov/ondcppubs/publications/pdf/whatworks.pd f

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