This Is An Anti-Drug Ad

No pills, no needles, no warnings, no worst-case imagery. Independent Boise agency Drake Cooper’s “This Is An Anti-Drug Ad” campaign reframes positive everyday Idaho moments as anti-drug ads. Some are big, like base jumping at Perrine Bridge, or a summit with friends. Most are ordinary: homemade pizza night, showing up for weekly youth activities, and making your baby laugh. Instead of scare tactics, this is an anti-drug campaign that never shows drugs or talks about them. It’s an entirely unique approach, a positive spin that rests on one insight: the story of why you shouldn’t do drugs is already being told in homes and communities across the state, and the campaign’s job is to bring attention to it.

“Most anti-drug advertising is just that: ‘anti.’ It focuses on the negative, showing what terrible things will happen to you if you do drugs,” said Naomi Duckworth, Creative Director, Drake Cooper. “We found more power in doing the exact opposite—showing what wonderful things can happen if you choose not to do drugs. It turns out that these wonderful things are happening all over our beautiful state of Idaho, and all we had to do was put a label on them. Our campaign calls these pure and true moments what they are: the perfect advertisement for choosing to stay clean.”

Paid for by the Anti-Drug Ad campaign, supported by a grant from the Idaho Millennium Fund, “This Is An Anti-Drug Ad” features sixteen single-shot :15s, each one an uncut moment of life in Idaho. Midway through, one line appears over the picture, “This is an anti-drug ad,” then fades as the moment plays on. For the most part, that line is the only copy in the entire campaign. There’s no spokesperson, no logo-led sign-off, and no one telling Idahoans what to do. Beyond a URL and the required attribution, the work is just the moment and the message, which gives it a quiet mystery that makes people look twice.

“We didn't have time to send one crew around the state, so we went to the people who were already there,” said Gabriel Silva, Director of Integrated Production, Drake Cooper. “Idaho is full of talented shooters who know their own backyards better than anyone. We gave them one brief and one rule, a single shot with no cuts, and they gave us Idaho. It also put our production budget to work for filmmakers who live here."

For the spots, Drake Cooper sourced and briefed 14 DPs, videographers and creators from across the state, covered their shoot days, and licensed clips from nine of them. That’s how the campaign went from brief to market in six weeks. The media buy includes CTV, linear, OLV, and YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook display; CTV pause ads; DOOH; paid search; and AntiDrugAd.com.