Saturday, November 22, 2008

Wowsers wasting money hand over fist

At least the Aussie media asks the right questions. That is the most hopeful aspect of this report.

The Australian Federal government is embarking on a graphic 'nightmare' campaign aimed at curbingf binge-drinking among teenagers.

But the question for government, health groups and advertisers is how do you create campaigns aimed at an age group predisposed to risk taking actually work?

There have been similar multimillion-dollar campaigns by governments in the past 20 years, including the national "How will you feel tomorrow?" campaign of the 1990s, which, if statistics are anything to go by, made no difference to youth binge drinking.

Margaret Hamilton from the Australian National Council on Drugs headed the advisory board on the "nightmare" campaign.

Professor Hamilton accepts that there will be no discernible drop in drinking among teens as a direct result of the campaign.


Classic the-state-seen-to-be-doing-something syndrome.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't get this. Who exactly are the "wowsers" in your headline, and what is it that defines them as such? The use of the word seems entirely out of context, and implies (to me anyway) that those expressing concern with the massive increase in binge drinking teenagers are on a par with Christian revivalists who once marched with drums and brass for complete prohibition of alcohol. To me, this seems like a weirdly superficial, immature and irrational way of looking at the issue.

brian_smaller said...

These campaigns are stupid beyond belief. Back in the 70s when I was a teenager we used to binge drink all the time - those that drank that is. Waste of money.

Brian Smaller