Statement of John P. Walters
Director of National Drug Control Policy
Before the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations
Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury and Related Agencies
The Office of National Drug Control Policy's FY 2004 Budget Request for the
National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign
April 9, 2003
What we saw when we analyzed the Media Campaign in early 2002 was the tremendous awareness that had been achieved, with the Campaign's branded messages generating nationwide ad awareness levels reaching 80% in some youth age categories and 60% or better among parents. The Campaign media presence is approximately the same as that of Pepsi and Nike. Against the unprecedented multi-media onslaught of pop culture images we are all exposed to, the message recognition levels achieved by the Media Campaign are impressive, and present an excellent platform upon which to build broad-based behavior change results. With some expert advice we implemented a series of fundamental Campaign changes in spring 2002. These changes are discussed in detail later in this testimony, but as an example, we found the Campaign was not targeting its messages at the most vulnerable age group, 14-16 year olds, where drug use data shows the sharpest increases. Nor were the ads employed being sufficiently tested to assure their effectiveness. We also found not enough of the advertising was hard hitting.
New advertising produced through PDFA and based on these Campaign changes was first introduced in October 2002 with multi-media ads produced by the Leo Burnett agency of Chicago. They were replaced in late January 2003 with a second group of new ads, these produced through PDFA by the McCann Erickson agency of New York, which are currently on air. We will not know the cumulative effectiveness of these new ads for some months yet. What we know so far through our ongoing Campaign tracking service is that the Leo Burnett ads achieved high national awareness levels faster than any ads previously employed by the Campaign.
We are seeing signs now that we believe demonstrates the Campaign effectiveness. We expect that the significant changes we implemented last year will produce even greater impact. Results of our evaluation of new advertising based on these changes will not be available until late May 2003 when we will issue a short term evaluation that contrasts Campaign effectiveness prior to the reforms initiated last fall with effectiveness indicators measured since that time. In November 2003 the final report of the 5-year Westat/NIDA study will be completed.
