Stay true to who???

I wrote about this in the past, but with a different view. Now after listening to the same ad more than ten different times I’ve changed how I viewed it. For one of my two jobs you are allowed to listen to music and for the most part I listen to Pandora, which plays ads if you don’t pay for it monthly. Do to the fact that I am a broke college student I just live with the ads. The ad I looked at is the For Stay True To You the campaign to keep teenagers away from drugs. This one in particular is about smoking weed. It starts off with a student saying that he feels as if he’s the only one who doesn't smoke, but then that he found out he’s not alone and is surrounded by a few other students. The ad then goes on to tell the facts about high schoolers smoking weed. The ad was done using actors, but none that looked familiar to me. The ad itself takes place in a high school where the actors are sitting on the steps. It last 15 seconds and I’ve only heard it on Pandora. This ad is one in a series of ads that is for the Stay true to you campaign. So far I’ve heard two other ads for this campaign. The technique that this ad used was the association principle. They used this by showing that this campaign is for teens who are above using drugs to be cool and such as well as offer a website that they can go to in order to learn more.
This form of ad I have heard many times before when it comes to a campaign like this one. The ad that I remember is from when I was younger, I think middle school or early high school. The ad took place in a house where a teenage girl is sitting on her couch, but she’s deflated like a balloon with no air In it. The commercial then goes on to talk about how her life became to be this way and it was because she smoked weed. The target audience is high school teens who feel the pressure to do drugs. It seems to be trying to break a stereotype more than continue to push one. I believe this because it has a high schooler saying he feels like the only one who doesn’t smoke weed when he feels left out it shows how other are stereotyped.
The strengths this ad has is that its reaching out to students/ teenagers and making them feel like its okay to feel alone, but that they truly aren’t alone. It also provides a place where you can go and look at more facts.Now the weaknesses of the ad is something that stood out to me when I watched it for the first time. In the ad the actor says that they feel like they are the only one who doesn’t smoke but when it shows you the facts it states that more than 80 of high school juniors in Oregon don’t smoke, so it would be more common to not smoke than it would be to smoke. The ad is also very short and provides little information on the campaign besides the logo. I’ve heard or seen commercials like this my entire life which is why it so memorable for me. I believe that it did connect which is one of the reasons they keep making this type of commercial.
Stay true to you campaign has its own web site that allows people to explore the consequences, health effects, other people’s stories, and a place to ask questions. The website post facts about pot usage in Oregon and such. They also have an Instagram where they post pictures with quotes, and celebrity sayings about smoking. When I look into the effectiveness of the ad I didn’t find much on whether it works or not. I could not find a business article about this campaign but I did find an article from oregonlive.com. It talks about the main point of the campaign not being and anti-pot ad, but rather a campaign to show the effects that smoking weed would have on them. If I were the target audience and truly felt alone when it comes to smoking I defiantly would have checked out the web site. I don’t see anything bad with this campaign so I would recommend that teenagers who are struggling take a look at it and learn a little about the effects that weed can have one a person.
I learned that this series of ads isn’t anti-pot but something that just wants to show people the health effects that it can have on a person, and that they don’t have to be apart of it. Along with that I learned that a larger number than expected amount of high school students don’t smoke pot. That’s probably what surprised me the most. This link has the original ad, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz4DCi-Ptjc , and the other three links are the website itself, the oregonlive.com article and an older ad that this campaign has run before.




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