Pulse Marketing’s Lauren Fried says Federal government’s ice campaign misses the mark

The federal government’s ‘Ice Destroys Lives‘ television advertising campaign misses the mark and the measure of its success is misguided, according to marketing expert Lauren Fried.

Fried, founder and managing director of Pulse Marketing, appeared on Gruen last night, which returned to the ABC after a two-year hiatus. The show, about everything advertising, examined the ice campaign, of which the government recently rolled out round two.

Some of the show’s panelists agreed the $11 million campaign appeared to be a public relations exercise – to show the government was trying to do something about Australia’s ice “epidemic”.

Says Fried (left): “If the federal government was serious about the campaign and wanted real results they would need to implement advertising that ran all year long and on the types of platforms that would reach their intended target market – at-risk 14-25 year olds and their parents.

“And if indeed there is an epidemic, $11 million is substantially less than the government has previously spent on awareness campaigns about other issues deeply affecting our society.”

The series of television commercials, which depict the impact of ice use on individuals and their families, are almost identical to the government’s 2007 advertising campaign.

Says Fried: “Our media consumption and behaviours have shifted dramatically since the ads first aired in 2007, and as a result we’ve had to be smarter in the content of campaigns and the media we use to reach our intended audience.

“This audience are heavy users of social media and mobile devices, therefore a campaign from a peer perspective rather than a parent figure, that’s sharable on social media, would have been a much more effective approach, and one that would have held more credibility with the target audience.”

Announcing round two of the campaign recently, Health Minister Fiona Nash said: “51 per cent of at-risk youth who had seen the ads said they would now avoid using ice, a fantastic result” – a statistic deep within the campaign evaluation report from Stancombe Research and Planning in August this year.

Says Fried: “I acknowledge it’s a difficult area and there is no transaction or sales data to measure the success of this campaign. However, the government is measuring the campaign’s success by how many people, unprompted, have seen the ads – a metric that is too soft and not a real indicator if people have indeed been deterred from ice usage.

“In the commercial sector you would never have a client agree to launch and roll out a campaign that’s of such importance to Australia, and so topical in the media, without a long-term strategy behind it. And this is what the government appears to have done by running this campaign prior to the National Ice Action Strategy being finalised.”