Montana Meth Project releases new ads

The last batch of ads from the Montana Meth Project just skimmed a few possible high-risk scenarios of meth use.

They featured a car full of teenagers dropping their overdosed friend in front of an emergency room before speeding off and a young girl crying with her boyfriend after selling herself for a little baggie of the drug.

In what the Montana Meth Project calls “Phase Four,” ads now show a group of kids laughing and watching TV as their overdosed friend lies dying on the floor in front of them, and two girls approaching a group of men in an alley with an offer:
“You can do whatever you want to me for 50 bucks,” one of them proposes before both are led into a dirty bathroom.

The catchphrase this time is “This isn’t normal, but on meth it is.”

Revealed Tuesday, the newest series of the print, radio and television campaign on behalf of the non-profit organization intends to use more stark images to reach their target demographic, which the new executive director of the Montana Meth Project, Dennis Taylor, said is working.

“We’ve been able to reach 90 percent of our target audience, which is Montana teens,” Taylor said.

A report filed by Montana Attorney General Mike McGrath shows a 45 percent drop in lifetime meth use by teens since 2005, the year the campaign was launched.

“Based on our results now, we’re making substantial progress,” Taylor said.

Filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, director of “21 Grams” and “Babel,” directed three of the four new ads.

Kirsten Clausen of the Meth Project Foundation said the situational factors behind the ads are the product of meetings between the director and Montana Meth Project staffers as well as Iñárritu’s own personal vision.

They are not the only ones who have a say in the final product, though.

“All the ads are always tested with focus groups of Montana teens,” Clausen said.

Taylor said the teen focus groups recommended that this batch of ads be stronger in delivery, which factored into the new ads. He said the goal of the focus groups is to refresh the ads to meet common understanding of meth as it is today.

This way, he says, the message won’t lose its effect on the age group that is most vulnerable to trying meth their first time: ages 10 to 12.

“There are kids turning 11 and 12 every day,” Taylor said.

The ads will later be aired in Wyoming, Idaho, Illinois and Arizona.