Focusing ads on the target audience, not the funders or other stakeholders

For some time, I've complained that most anti-litter campaigns miss the point, because the message--don't litter or you shouldn't litter--doesn 't resonate with the most active litterers, people like those driving a car with DC license plate CP 6565 who told me to f*** off when I said something to them about their throwing stuff out the window onto the sidewalk on 12th Street NE.

Or today I was discussing a marketing campaign for a public market in DC that I won't name, which I think is very misdirected...

Slate has an article, "Aliens Don't Do Drugs: The best anti-pot ad ever," about an anti-marijuana advertisement that the author thinks is good. I am not so sure I agree that the ad is so great, but the point made in the article:

Until recently, most anti-marijuana ads made the same fundamental mistake: They tried to link smoking weed with some sort of immediate physical danger. Think of the PSA in which a carful of stoners runs over a girl on a bicycle; or the one in which a fuzzy-brained pot smoker shoots his friend (oopsy daisy!) in the head. Melodramatic scare tactics like these may reassure the older, out-of-touch politicians who approve federal funding for anti-drug ads. But when it comes to a drug like weed, this message just doesn't ring true with the people it's meant to reach.[.]

is apt, that advertisements need to have some truth to them, and resonate with the target audience, in order to be effective.