Revealed: ‘Stoner Sloth’ advertisement cost $350k
The New South Wales government forked out $350,000 to create the failed “Stoner Sloth” advertising campaign, according to reports.
Launched in December 2015, the campaign also took 265 public service hours to pull off, according to The Guardian.
The campaign which cast a human sized sloth as a teenager suffering the dulling effects of marijuana was panned heavily online – it even raised the ire of NSW Premier Mike Baird who described it as “quite something”.
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According to project, obtained by the NSW Greens upper house member Dr Mehreen Faruqi under public access laws, the total cost for the campaign was $351,790.
Of that sum, $36,386 was paid to the advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi.
The advertising agency had previously defended the campaign, claiming: “The videos we created were designed as part of a preventative campaign specifically for teens; the audience is not for adults or long-term cannabis users.”
At the time the ad was released, the National Cannabis Protection and Information Centre (NCPIC) backed away from the campaign, despite being linked to it.
“The current ‘stoner sloth’ campaign doesn’t reflect NCPIC views on how cannabis harms campaigns should be approached,” it said in a statement.
Ms Farqui told The Guardian that the campaign’s costs made it even more laughable.
“It is baffling and frankly quite depressing that the NSW government wasted this much public money and hundreds of hours of public service time on such a poorly conceived idea,” she said.
“Looking at the $60,000 plus spent on market research alone, you’d think they would have had a better idea about what actually might have connected with people.
The spend included: $115,000 for research and evaluation, $136,700 spent on production, including $59,814 for production company 8Com Australia and $23,000 on actors.
A further $99,990 went to the media agency Universal McCann.
