DRUGZNOTHUGZ
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Internet guy from Melbourne Lewis Spears put out a review last night, and yeah, pretty much.
Even NSW Premier is taking the piss on Twitter about it.
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DPMC Moderators: thegreenhand | tryptakid
NSW Government Launches Anti-Drug Campaign, “Stoner Sloth”. Beautifully, It’s Also Th
- Thread starter poledriver
- Start date
Internet guy from Melbourne Lewis Spears put out a review last night, and yeah, pretty much.
Even NSW Premier is taking the piss on Twitter about it.
poledriver
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pofacedhoe
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its too funny, he picks up the salad because his claws cant grasp the salt.
watch it stoned and you will cry laughing
never mind howard marks having a criminal smuggling empire and evading the law for years while constantly stoned.
it doesn't make you shit.
booze does though and oh how the aussies love that shit
watch it stoned and you will cry laughing
never mind howard marks having a criminal smuggling empire and evading the law for years while constantly stoned.
it doesn't make you shit.
booze does though and oh how the aussies love that shit
poledriver
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Saatchi & Saatchi defends $500,000 'Stoner Sloth' anti-marijuana campaign
The advertising agency behind the controversial "Stoner Sloth" anti-marijuana videos, which cost taxpayers half a million dollars, has hit back at criticism, saying the campaign's message is completely lost on adults.
After a week of relentless ridicule, Saatchi & Saatchi (S&S) has stepped out in defence of the NSW government's latest anti-drugs initiative, which it created.
The global creative firm described the $500,000 budget as a "moderate spend in advertising terms" which has generated a "significant return on investment and involvement" for its client.
Advertisement
S&S also took a swipe at those fuelling a social media backlash, arguing the concept was never intended to be viewed through their eyes.
"The videos we created were designed as part of a preventative campaign specifically for teens; the audience is not for adults or long-term cannabis users," said a spokesman.
"Two different creative approaches were pre-tested by independent researchers among the teenage target audience, which verified the potential efficacy for this campaign."
Launched last week under the slogan "you're worse on weed", the campaign warns teens of the dangers of regular marijuana use by portraying those who smoke it as grumbling, disconnected "stoner sloths".
It has since generated 4 million views on Facebook and YouTube as well as a further 30,000 Facebook likes.
Meanwhile, international news agencies from the BBC to Time magazine,have reported on the campaign. It also sparked some 25 parody videos that have been viewed almost 100,000 times.
"The videos have truly gone viral," said the S&S spokesman who added: "The unexpected global media attention is now providing a platform for parents and teenagers all over the world to have 'the conversation' about cannabis in an engaging way."
Another creative agency behind the project, UM, which oversaw media buy, strategy and social media, is also interpreting the "strong viewership and engagement" as a success.
"While it's early days, our research shows the majority of negative comments are not from our target audience, which is teenagers," said a UM spokesperson.
Fairfax Media sought comment from neutral experts in the advertising industry.
"The problem is that whenever a campaign is sent up and greeted with howls of derisive laughter, you've got a major problem," said award-winning advertising writer Jane Caro, who added the target audience would be "completely aware" that the sloth concept had been rubbished.
She pointed to the infamous Roads and Traffic Authority 'Little Pinkie' adverts – which belittled men who speed – as a campaign geared towards young people that "genuinely worked".
"It worked because it took risks. It was a little bit rude," she said. "Whereas this feels parental. It is trying to be safe. You can see how inoffensive it is trying to be. And the problem with being inoffensive is, it becomes lame."
But marketing and advertising consultant Toby Ralph, who has worked on numerous large health education campaigns, believes the "mudslide of criticism" has been largely unjustified.
"My opinion, for what it is worth, is that it is a good campaign. All this is doing is saying that some heavy weed smokers can become boring as bats---, and I think it does it well."
Matt Noffs, meanwhile, whose Noffs Foundation specialises in drug treatment for youngsters, described the mockery as "fair feedback" from a wider community who viewed the videos as a "waste of money".
"For less than the cost of this campaign, we run street universities that help hundreds of kids off drugs," he said, adding: "The biggest issue I have with this campaign is that it stigmatises children with drug issues."
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/saachi--s...-anti-marijuana-campaign-20151225-gluwrv.html
The advertising agency behind the controversial "Stoner Sloth" anti-marijuana videos, which cost taxpayers half a million dollars, has hit back at criticism, saying the campaign's message is completely lost on adults.
After a week of relentless ridicule, Saatchi & Saatchi (S&S) has stepped out in defence of the NSW government's latest anti-drugs initiative, which it created.
The global creative firm described the $500,000 budget as a "moderate spend in advertising terms" which has generated a "significant return on investment and involvement" for its client.
Advertisement
S&S also took a swipe at those fuelling a social media backlash, arguing the concept was never intended to be viewed through their eyes.
"The videos we created were designed as part of a preventative campaign specifically for teens; the audience is not for adults or long-term cannabis users," said a spokesman.
"Two different creative approaches were pre-tested by independent researchers among the teenage target audience, which verified the potential efficacy for this campaign."
Launched last week under the slogan "you're worse on weed", the campaign warns teens of the dangers of regular marijuana use by portraying those who smoke it as grumbling, disconnected "stoner sloths".
It has since generated 4 million views on Facebook and YouTube as well as a further 30,000 Facebook likes.
Meanwhile, international news agencies from the BBC to Time magazine,have reported on the campaign. It also sparked some 25 parody videos that have been viewed almost 100,000 times.
"The videos have truly gone viral," said the S&S spokesman who added: "The unexpected global media attention is now providing a platform for parents and teenagers all over the world to have 'the conversation' about cannabis in an engaging way."
Another creative agency behind the project, UM, which oversaw media buy, strategy and social media, is also interpreting the "strong viewership and engagement" as a success.
"While it's early days, our research shows the majority of negative comments are not from our target audience, which is teenagers," said a UM spokesperson.
Fairfax Media sought comment from neutral experts in the advertising industry.
"The problem is that whenever a campaign is sent up and greeted with howls of derisive laughter, you've got a major problem," said award-winning advertising writer Jane Caro, who added the target audience would be "completely aware" that the sloth concept had been rubbished.
She pointed to the infamous Roads and Traffic Authority 'Little Pinkie' adverts – which belittled men who speed – as a campaign geared towards young people that "genuinely worked".
"It worked because it took risks. It was a little bit rude," she said. "Whereas this feels parental. It is trying to be safe. You can see how inoffensive it is trying to be. And the problem with being inoffensive is, it becomes lame."
But marketing and advertising consultant Toby Ralph, who has worked on numerous large health education campaigns, believes the "mudslide of criticism" has been largely unjustified.
"My opinion, for what it is worth, is that it is a good campaign. All this is doing is saying that some heavy weed smokers can become boring as bats---, and I think it does it well."
Matt Noffs, meanwhile, whose Noffs Foundation specialises in drug treatment for youngsters, described the mockery as "fair feedback" from a wider community who viewed the videos as a "waste of money".
"For less than the cost of this campaign, we run street universities that help hundreds of kids off drugs," he said, adding: "The biggest issue I have with this campaign is that it stigmatises children with drug issues."
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/saachi--s...-anti-marijuana-campaign-20151225-gluwrv.html
poledriver
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Why the 'Stoner Sloth' Ads Are the Worst Possible Way to Stop Kids from Getting High
As 2015 comes to a close, the internet is having a good laugh at "Stoner Sloth," the series of anti-weed TV spots produced by an Australian government agency. The ads have been mercilessly mocked for everything from featuring a cute animal that isn't exactly imperiled by being a bit sleepy to the fact that an easy-to-make error in the URL teased in the commercials leads to a pro-marijuana site.
A meme was born, gladdening the hearts of T-shirt makers everywhere.
But to anyone well-versed in addiction, the ads are more disturbing than funny. They show how far we have to go in understanding the nature of the problem and the best ways to prevent it. Because these Australian commercials aren't outliers in using social stigma to try to prevent drug use—indeed, to paraphrase the kid in a famously stigmatizing 1980s American PSA, they (likely) learned it from us. And unfortunately, across the world, health agencies still seem addicted to stigma.
In the Aussie ads, a female sloth is shown being shamed by a teacher and classmates for failing an exam and a male sloth is humiliated by his family because he passes the salad rather than the salt at dinner. He's also excluded by his friends after he doesn't respond quickly enough to the catty remarks they are making about someone else at a party.
Stoner Sloth can respond only with pathetic grunts and shrinking, submissive body language; he or she never speaks. Indeed, Stoner Sloth seems far more like a Depressed and Disabled Sloth: The long talons don't seem capable of either writing test answers or physically passing anything smaller than the salad to mom. The big brown eyes radiate distress. But rather than compassion, our poor sloth is met each time with contempt, ridicule, and rejection. No wonder they want to get high—everyone around them is an asshole.
Almost accidentally, the ads illustrate an important truth about addiction, which often includes heavy marijuana use and drinking during adolescence. The people who are most vulnerable to all types of substance use disorders are indeed the outcasts, the kids who don't fit in, the ones who are desperate for connection. While teens who do well socially and academically also take drugs, they are not the group at highest risk for drug use disorders.
High-risk teens often have developmental disabilities like attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or mental illnesses like depression—at least 50 percent of youth with substance use disorders have another psychiatric diagnosis. Often these conditions—even before they are fully manifest—make kids stand out from their peers, either because they behave strangely or because their inner lives make them feel like outsiders.
Children at high risk of addiction are also commonly victims of trauma—at least two-thirds of teens getting treatment for substance abuse have suffered at least one devastating early-life adversity, like losing a parent or being a victim of sexual assault, abuse, or neglect. Research shows that the greater the number of childhood traumas, the higher the risk for substance use disorders of all types. And whether children stand out, feel different and behave unusually because of trauma, learning disorders, or incipient mental illness—or some combination thereof—they become targets for bullying, which further raises addiction risk.
Consequently, the "stoner" kids adults most want to reach with such ads are often sad and withdrawn long before they ever smoke pot—social rejection is what they are trying to relieve by getting high. Telling them that drug use will make them into outcasts isn't going to work if that's where they already think they are.
To do better, people who want to prevent addiction need to start by taking the drug user's perspective. Otherwise, they fail to recognize the upsides of drug culture, which do exist and must be replaced if the goal is to make drugs less appealing. Drug culture solves real problems for kids who are different: Not only does it offer potential escape and pleasure, but it provides a highly forgiving social group, which actually welcomes and celebrates weirdos and oddballs. As long as you take drugs and aren't going to call cops, you can behave almost as strangely as you like and be accepted—and you can blame the drugs for it if you do make a faux pas.
In my own experience with drugs, it was only among fellow users that I first felt accepted. It wasn't just the drugs that made me feel comfortable and safe, but also the warmth of the friends who included me. And I am far from the first to have had this experience and made these connections. In fact, studies show that in treatment for addiction, shame and humiliation only worsens outcomes, while kindness and respect improve them.
If we want to prevent addiction, then, we have to increase social acceptance, not stigma. The last thing Stoner Sloth—or anyone with a drug problem—needs is more shame and self-loathing. Indeed, research suggests the schools that work hard to create an inclusive caring community not only reduce bullying, but also reduce drug problems. Feeling connected and included at school was one of the best predictors of reduced drug use, according to one large national study.
Stigma doesn't prevent addiction—it only makes it worse. And if kids live in a social world where the only people who don't reject them are drug users, should we really be surprised that all they want to do is get stoned?
http://www.vice.com/read/why-stoner-sloth-is-the-worst-possible-way-to-stop-kids-from-getting-high
As 2015 comes to a close, the internet is having a good laugh at "Stoner Sloth," the series of anti-weed TV spots produced by an Australian government agency. The ads have been mercilessly mocked for everything from featuring a cute animal that isn't exactly imperiled by being a bit sleepy to the fact that an easy-to-make error in the URL teased in the commercials leads to a pro-marijuana site.
A meme was born, gladdening the hearts of T-shirt makers everywhere.
But to anyone well-versed in addiction, the ads are more disturbing than funny. They show how far we have to go in understanding the nature of the problem and the best ways to prevent it. Because these Australian commercials aren't outliers in using social stigma to try to prevent drug use—indeed, to paraphrase the kid in a famously stigmatizing 1980s American PSA, they (likely) learned it from us. And unfortunately, across the world, health agencies still seem addicted to stigma.
In the Aussie ads, a female sloth is shown being shamed by a teacher and classmates for failing an exam and a male sloth is humiliated by his family because he passes the salad rather than the salt at dinner. He's also excluded by his friends after he doesn't respond quickly enough to the catty remarks they are making about someone else at a party.
Stoner Sloth can respond only with pathetic grunts and shrinking, submissive body language; he or she never speaks. Indeed, Stoner Sloth seems far more like a Depressed and Disabled Sloth: The long talons don't seem capable of either writing test answers or physically passing anything smaller than the salad to mom. The big brown eyes radiate distress. But rather than compassion, our poor sloth is met each time with contempt, ridicule, and rejection. No wonder they want to get high—everyone around them is an asshole.
Almost accidentally, the ads illustrate an important truth about addiction, which often includes heavy marijuana use and drinking during adolescence. The people who are most vulnerable to all types of substance use disorders are indeed the outcasts, the kids who don't fit in, the ones who are desperate for connection. While teens who do well socially and academically also take drugs, they are not the group at highest risk for drug use disorders.
High-risk teens often have developmental disabilities like attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or mental illnesses like depression—at least 50 percent of youth with substance use disorders have another psychiatric diagnosis. Often these conditions—even before they are fully manifest—make kids stand out from their peers, either because they behave strangely or because their inner lives make them feel like outsiders.
Children at high risk of addiction are also commonly victims of trauma—at least two-thirds of teens getting treatment for substance abuse have suffered at least one devastating early-life adversity, like losing a parent or being a victim of sexual assault, abuse, or neglect. Research shows that the greater the number of childhood traumas, the higher the risk for substance use disorders of all types. And whether children stand out, feel different and behave unusually because of trauma, learning disorders, or incipient mental illness—or some combination thereof—they become targets for bullying, which further raises addiction risk.
Consequently, the "stoner" kids adults most want to reach with such ads are often sad and withdrawn long before they ever smoke pot—social rejection is what they are trying to relieve by getting high. Telling them that drug use will make them into outcasts isn't going to work if that's where they already think they are.
To do better, people who want to prevent addiction need to start by taking the drug user's perspective. Otherwise, they fail to recognize the upsides of drug culture, which do exist and must be replaced if the goal is to make drugs less appealing. Drug culture solves real problems for kids who are different: Not only does it offer potential escape and pleasure, but it provides a highly forgiving social group, which actually welcomes and celebrates weirdos and oddballs. As long as you take drugs and aren't going to call cops, you can behave almost as strangely as you like and be accepted—and you can blame the drugs for it if you do make a faux pas.
In my own experience with drugs, it was only among fellow users that I first felt accepted. It wasn't just the drugs that made me feel comfortable and safe, but also the warmth of the friends who included me. And I am far from the first to have had this experience and made these connections. In fact, studies show that in treatment for addiction, shame and humiliation only worsens outcomes, while kindness and respect improve them.
If we want to prevent addiction, then, we have to increase social acceptance, not stigma. The last thing Stoner Sloth—or anyone with a drug problem—needs is more shame and self-loathing. Indeed, research suggests the schools that work hard to create an inclusive caring community not only reduce bullying, but also reduce drug problems. Feeling connected and included at school was one of the best predictors of reduced drug use, according to one large national study.
Stigma doesn't prevent addiction—it only makes it worse. And if kids live in a social world where the only people who don't reject them are drug users, should we really be surprised that all they want to do is get stoned?
http://www.vice.com/read/why-stoner-sloth-is-the-worst-possible-way-to-stop-kids-from-getting-high
JessFR
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I'd be much better able to feel bad for them if they weren't still defending their mistake.
Kids doing drugs is a serious matter, fucking up when you could have done better had you done your homework is hard to excuse, continuing to defend it after you've failed is inexcusable.
TheBlackPirate
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This add is an improvement over the old anti-LSD anti-cannabis propaganda. Part of this persistent irrational prohibition is actually the result of old propaganda. The baby-boomers and the baby-boomers parents were inundated with the messages of the War on Drugs. In those peoples beliefs psychedelics and cannabis wreck your brain and tear the social fabric of society worse than other drugs. This is only in those peoples minds.
Beliefs and prejudices developed in our youth and constantly reinforced are strong, whether wrong or right. Often those generations never experimented with the chemicals they oppose. If they had actually experimented with a few of those drugs and learned from abusing them briefly they'd realize alcohol and benzodiazapine addiction wrecks your brain chemistry much worse than psychedelics and cannabis. Just look at the Wikipedia entries.
Alcohol Withdrawal
Benzodiazepine Withdrawal Syndrome
Beliefs and prejudices developed in our youth and constantly reinforced are strong, whether wrong or right. Often those generations never experimented with the chemicals they oppose. If they had actually experimented with a few of those drugs and learned from abusing them briefly they'd realize alcohol and benzodiazapine addiction wrecks your brain chemistry much worse than psychedelics and cannabis. Just look at the Wikipedia entries.
Alcohol Withdrawal
Benzodiazepine Withdrawal Syndrome
ro4eva
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Yes, it is indeed, I agree.
And as far as them still defending their mistake is concerned, I'm not surprised at all based on the history of the war on drugs in general.
I mean, look how badly the DEA has performed with respect to achieving any long term goals set forth: zero progress. And even after 4+ decades of the same failure and futility, they have never publicly admitted that they have failed to amount to anything positive (failed to meet their long term goals initially set forth back in 1973). On the contrary, they continue to staunchly defend their vested interests with absolute resolve, which is frankly sickening to witness.
Ironically they remind me of drug addicts who relentlessly deny they have a problem with drug addiction (which I've been guilty of). And in that sense, I don't know whether to laugh or cry to be perfectly honest (it's very frustrating that they seemingly don't have the ability to recognize that they're a bunch of fuck ups).