Government exchanges preaching for teaching

In the run-up to Christmas the ad breaks are packed with campaigns from government-funded bodies warning the public about the dangers of drink-driving, smoking and drug abuse.

This year is no different. Last week the Government launched its 25th drink-drive campaign, showing graphic images of real-life road accidents set to familiar Christmas songs such as “Jingle Bells” and Cliff Richard’s “Mistletoe and Wine”.

But Government reminders not to engage in activities which endanger our own and others’ health and safety may soon extend outside the festive season. The Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR) is planning to turn the drink-drive campaign into a year-round initiative, and the Department of Health (DoH) is looking for an ad agency to create a wide-ranging sexual health campaign which will incorporate the Government’s first major Aids awareness initiative for ten years (MW last week).

The DoH campaign, which will target 16to 40-year-olds, is part of the £47.5m national strategy on sexual health announced earlier this year to respond to the dramatic rise in the number of cases of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in the past couple of years. It aims to reduce the total number of new HIV and gonorrhoea infections by 25 per cent by the end of 2007.

TBWA’s controversial “iceberg” campaign announced the arrival of AIDS to the UK in 1986, and carried the chilling message that everyone was at risk.

Colin Dixon, director of national services at HIV charity the Terrence Higgins Trust says: “The UK’s first campaign was ahead of the game and this contributed to the relatively small number of HIV infections in this country compared with the rest of Europe. It did, however, use shock tactics, which in our experience are not the most effective way to get appropriate messages across.”

BMP won the account in 1988, and the new ads featured “Mrs Dawson” and “Mr Brewster” and focused on ways to encourage young people to use condoms.

An effectiveness report by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising published in 1995, claimed the ads “played a vital role in the prevention of HIV transmission – by preventing AIDS from slipping off the public agenda and encouraging condom use”.

But since 1992 there has been no high profile ad campaign for HIV/AIDS, and figures published by the Public Health Laboratory Service earlier this year show an upward trend in STDs since 1995. New cases of HIV last year reached a record high of 3,425 – up 14 per cent on 1999 – and new cases of gonorrhoea in England and Wales rose 27 per cent between 1999 and 2000.

The challenge for government-funded awareness campaigns is to change people’s attitudes and behaviour without appearing to “preach” at them. Last year the Government faced accusations that it was running “nanny state” campaigns. The British Pregnancy Advisory Service, for example, criticised a £2m campaign on teenage pregnancies, created by Delaney Lund Knox Warren, for alienating young people. Public health minister Yvette Cooper ordered that future campaigns on smoking, eating and drinking should be less like “lectures”.

A source at the DoH admits: “In the past, campaigns have been rather heavy handed, but now we start from the assumption that people can make their own choices. We give them the information but at the end of day it is up to them.

“You have to give people the facts and talk about safe sex in a language they understand. Messages need to be accessible in simple language and not patronising or finger wagging.”

Awareness campaigns often rely on shock tactics to help cut through advertising cutter and to make people sit up and take note. The backseat-belt campaign, created by Abbott Mead Vickers.BBDO, used such tactics – showing a teenage boy sitting back down in the back seat of the car after killing his mother, who is sitting in the driver’s seat.

But using such distressing images can backfire, as children’s charity Barnardo’s found out after 15 people complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about its poster campaign which featured pictures of dead people. Although the complaints were not upheld, the charity agreed to amend one ad showing a man’s body hanging from a garage ceiling, after hearing that it distressed families whose loved ones had committed suicide.

A spokesman for the DTLR says: “We want people to sit up and take notice, whatever approach we take, whether hard-hitting or more subtle. We are constantly looking at new ways of making adverting work and keeping a freshness to it so that people don’t look at the ad and think ‘oh no not again'”.

The DTLR claims that in the 25 years of government drink-drive campaigns, about 20,000 lives have been saved. The department’s statistics show that since 1976 the number of drink-related fatalities on the road has fallen from 1,600 to 520 in 2000, although last year’s figure was an upturn on 1999’s 460.

COI Communications deputy chief executive Peter Buchanan says it has more than 20 methods of judging the effectiveness of government-produced ads, but says: “The most difficult thing is not creating awareness. Changing people’s behavioural patterns, which are often very deep rooted, is the main challenge.”