Not Even Once ("Just Once")
Montana Meth Project2005
Not Even Once ("Just Once") is a 2005 30-second television commercials (with radio, print and billboards) for Montana Meth Project, created by Venables Bell & Partners, San Francisco.
The line
Not even once.
Why it works
A teenage girl promises she will try meth "just once", then steals "just once", then sleeps with a man for the drug "just once", until her little sister repeats the same promise. In 2005 the software billionaire Thomas Siebel set out to "unsell" methamphetamine in Montana as if it were a consumer product; Venables Bell & Partners' research found that teenagers ignored preachy authority figures, so the spots showed peers ruined by the drug in graphic detail. Saturation buying made the project the biggest advertiser in the state, reaching most Montana teens three times a week, and officials asked that the ads not air before 7 p.m. It is studied as the textbook test of shock tactics. Its backers cited falling teen meth use, but a 2008 review in Prevention Science found the campaign associated with greater acceptance of meth and lower perceived danger, and a 2010 study in the Journal of Health Economics found effects on use statistically indistinguishable from zero once an existing downward trend was accounted for.
Techniques
- Fear appeal Graphic scenes of peers ruined by the drug warn that trying meth even once leads to stealing, sex for drugs and a sister following suit.
- Shock and provocation Deliberately disturbing imagery is the whole strategy, so raw that officials ask for the spots to be kept off air until the evening.
- Storytelling A girl's repeated promise of doing things just once escalates scene by scene until her little sister makes the same vow.
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