Minors and Alcohol Shouldn't Mix

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — What better way to learn about advertising campaigns than to create one? That is exactly what the 11 undergraduate students in Ignatius Fosu’s class at the University of Arkansas did this spring, crafting three detailed campaigns to help the Fayetteville Police Department curb underage drinking.

One campaign team conducted a survey of 246 University of Arkansas and Fayetteville High School students under 21. Random samples were sent to university students, while the surveys were e-mailed to the high school campus, where they were distributed to the health classes. The result: about 65 percent of these underage students said they drink alcohol. And simply telling young people to stop drinking doesn’t work.

"To undertake the task, I divided the class into three teams, each team working like a real world account team in an advertising/PR agency. For example, each team had an account executive, production director, research director and strategic chair. Each team developed a different strategy based on findings from their research,” said Fosu, an assistant professor in the Lemke Department of Journalism in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.

The campaign objectives were clear: to raise awareness of how serious the problem of underage drinking is in Fayetteville and to reduce the number of offenses.

Sgt. Shannon Gabbard of the Fayetteville Police Department said that 65 percent is not an unnaturally high figure, but probably in keeping with national statistics. But for the police, the stakes in curbing underage drinking are high.

“One of the biggest killers of young people from teenagers to 21 is alcohol-related accidents. The sooner we begin working on education and prevention, the better off we are.  But we’re not reaching some of the people we really need to, which would be the freshman class at the University of Arkansas. I think students who have recently experienced the pressure to drink first-hand can develop campaigns that will reach this audience,” said Sgt. Gabbard.

The research also revealed that most underage drinkers get alcohol from adults. As a result, one team recommended that the Fayetteville Police Department focus on parents and adults who supply alcohol and make them more aware of the legal consequences should they get caught.

Because most underage drinkers obtain alcohol at social gatherings, another team focused on providing alternatives to such social events where illegal drinking normally takes place.

The third team concentrated their efforts on discouraging college students from using fake IDs to buy alcohol. Most underage drinkers at the university belong to Greek fraternities and sororities, and so the students concentrated on these organizations, recommending that the police department sponsor social activities and heighten awareness by personally talking to members.

The teams also developed a budget and creative works such as public service announcements, print ads, brochures and media plans.

They presented the three unique campaigns to the police department on May 2. The department has decided to seek funding to implement them.

This is the second campaigns class Fosu taught since coming to the university in 2005. The first was a campaign for MaxSurg Technology Services Inc., a telecommunications company in northwest Arkansas. The objectives of that campaign were to increase brand awareness and create a brand identity for the company. Impressed by the campaign, the client has started implementing it.

Fosu, who completed his doctorate in mass communication from the University of Alabama, previously worked as a television producer/director for METRO TV in Accra, Ghana, and as a disc jockey and talk show host for Radio Univers in Accra.