A Meth Project Ad
Colorado has a problem with meth. The
Department of Justice has called methamphetamine the “number one drug threat to
Colorado.” The average age of new meth users in 2012 was 19.7 years old. The
Meth Project is an advertisement campaign targeting teenagers; their goal is to
make them think twice about trying meth. In the visual ad entitled simply Tracy, the Meth Project tells the
viewers the story of a girl and her slip into meth abuse and its effects.
The
use of appeals to emotions to the audience of the campaign (teenagers) was
evident throughout. The entire video consists of disturbing images and words
describing the progressive destruction of a girl’s life. The narrator, a girl
with an unknown relationship to eponymous Tracy, only says a few short descriptive
statements about what she did, each giving context to the images shown. The ad
has a dark color scheme and cuts sharply between everyday images like a
storefront and more jarring ones, like a window breaking, a crying baby and a
screaming woman. There is no music behind, leaving only the images and the
narration. The ad effectively uses ‘scare-tactics’ in an effort to impress on
the audience that meth is not something you want to mess with.
The
ethical appeals of the ad are almost non-existent, relying on the disturbing
images and seemingly genuine emotions of the narrator near the end. There is
also a screen at the very end with the message “What do you know about Meth?”
along with “Ask methproject.org,” the only potential avenue for factual
information. We have no real reason to trust the narrator except for the expectation
of the empathy they should feel when seeing her emotions, however she is
relatable to the target audience.
Simple
statements and disturbing images make the message clear, that meth is not something
to mess with. There is no factual information to back back up this message, so
there is no real way to follow the argument logically.
While
I feel that the ad is effective and the message is clear, I think that it only
really employs pathos while ignoring both ethos and logos. The pathos is clear,
using empathy and fear to make people think about meth use, but ethos is based
entirely on the narrator with an unknown relationship to Tracy. Logos is
ignored almost entirely, with only observational statements about a girl and a
website listed at the very end of the ad. Again, I think that this is still
effective for the target audience, who is both likely to go to a website they
see on television and likely to empathize with the plight of the girl and the
narrator.
I believe that the ad is effective
for the target audience but perhaps not an educated resistant one. An educated
audience would probably ask why there are no real facts presented about meth, just
an emotional manipulation and nothing else. Honestly, I felt that way, and it
made me immediately skeptical. I am not in their target audience, but I still
felt that they would be better served either making a bigger deal of their
website or having some sort of facts. Pure observational statements and
manipulated empathy via an unknown narrator makes me wonder if there are
actually facts behind this story. It seems that while the ad would be effective
for its targeted audience, but a more educated audience wouldn’t have the same response.
Works Cited
National Institute on Drug Abuse. Research Report Series: Methamphetamine. Maryland: National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2013. Print.
United
States. U.S. Department of Justice. Rocky
Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area: Drug Market Analysis 2011. Washington:
GPO, 2011. Print.
