I guess I gotta say something. As a South Dakota-based web-centrict designer, the kind of guy who’s work-life keeps him orbiting one deviation beyond the advertising community, it’s time to go on the record about our state’s latest marketing misadventure.
Yes, you’ve seen it by now: Meth. We’re on it.
I’m going to be a little more gentle than some of the other voices out there. Once the shock wore off, and the initial WTF moment had a chance to dissipate, I had to admit that it’s got something to say. And a little zip, a zap, some bright spark is just the thing that the average public-service-announcement desperately needs.
But let’s start by agreeing that it’s not good. Ok? Can we do that? It seems they settled for word-play in an attempt to nail something big concept (like the classic Fried Eggs = Your Brainz metaphor.) Puns are fun, but too cheap to do the heavy lifting against hard drugs. That’s obvious, right?
Still, bless our hearts, we’ve failed harder. South Dakota knows how to get national buzz for all of the wrong reasons. Let’s review:
Don’t Jerk and Drive: Our highway department’s public safety campaign to encourage careful manipulation of the steering wheel on icy winter roads.
Scott Hoy, Please Stop: Big-promoting local lawyer gets national attention with a commercial that might be a PSA against distracted driving. Or maybe not.
Why Die On Mars If You Can Live In South Dakota? Ok, kudos. That’s pretty big concept, and by all means, we should follow Rick Perry’s lead and pitch the benefits of South Dakota to businesses stuck in high-tax states, or folks struggling in over-heated real-estate markets. But they might have overshot the mark… by about 33.9 million miles.
Meth. We’re On It. is more of tragedy. More like the Titanic. I think it had potential, a perch from which to fall. From the we’re-all-in-this-together concept, to the filming, the acting, the graphics, the scripting, the website: everything was strong, well-executed, on message. It’s more like one of those back-firing own-goals that takes everyone involved by surprise.
Some high-profile examples that come to mind:
U2’s deal with Apple to push out Songs of Innocence to every iTunes subscriber: This, on paper, must have seemed brilliant, a magnanimous act of pay-it-forward kindness from some guys that still heartily believe that rock ‘n roll can save the world. But they got the timing all wrong. It happened just as we were having a collective soul-search about the meaning of personal media ownership and control in the digital age. A few years earlier, and it could have been seen as groundbreaking, like Radiohead’s pay-what-you-will rollout of In Rainbows. A few years later and it would have just been another free thing you could find on Spotify, YouTube, whatever. No biggie. Timing is everything.
Janet and Justin’s “Wardrobe Malfunction”: The Superbowl halftime show is one of those things that’s really hard to get right. Even the best performances have their critics, take for instance U2’s post-9/11 show. If you go in for big production, you’re accused of not keeping it real. If you keep it real, you lack ambition. It’s a completely artificial environment. Good luck, guys. Now, one thing that always seems to work is showing a little skin. It’s a cheap shot, sure, but it’s been turning heads since Herod asked his step-daughter to dance. Not this time. It was the wrong skin at the wrong time, too much for such a family-friendly celebration of beer, gluttony, and cheerleading. And so the beheadings began once again. You wouldn’t see much more of Janet, and it was years before Justin could bring some sexyback.
As they say–and as our governor keeps reminding us–there’s no such thing as bad publicity. If it gets people talking, in a way, the job is done. If so, the investment has had the hoped-for effect. Conversations have been started, families and communities have been reminded to step up and address the drug problems close-at-hand. Not to sound cold, but I’d take the whole affair over another run of hard-luck stories and earnest warnings about the effect of meth on dental work. That’s been done.
I wonder if they considered something like “We’ve got a meth problem,” or “We’ve got a problem, with meth.” Not as punchy, for sure. But it uses the same hook, while pushing the joke back a step, linking “meth” to the word “problem” instead of leaving everyone straight up “on it.”
I’m not sure what good any of these sorts of campaigns actually do, but it seems like there’s always a budget available. It’s hard to “Just Say No” to public funds. The intentions, of course, are noble, but if I was in the department of tourism, or the chamber of commerce, or any of the other promotional organizations around our capable, highly-employable, forward-focused state: I’d be livid.
So to my dear clients back east, out west, wherever: I apologize. I promise we’ll do better next time, even if we have to stay up late, revise, re-work, (dare I say) tweak all night long. We’ll get there.
— Grant Wentzel – At your service!
