Singapore’s National Council Against Drug Abuse: Bringing Across the Message that “Every High Ends in a Low”

In April 2024, Tan Chong Huat had just taken over as the new Chairman of Singapore’s National Council Against Drug Abuse (NCADA), and he had found the domestic and global trends sobering. Not only was there a growing trend of youths abusing drugs before the age of 18, the intense lobbying by drug producers and other interest groups, and the well-funded information and marketing campaigns conducted by these groups in the media space, particularly online, had resulted in shifting global attitudes towards drugs, and influenced countries’ drug control approaches.

Given the impact of global misinformation on drug abuse in the online space, which had impacted attitudes amongst Singapore’s youths, one key initiative Tan took note of was the media campaign called “HIGH”, which NCADA had rolled out in 2020. The HIGH media campaign was based on an interactive short film with the same title, and features Nick, a successful young adult from a good family, who has to decide whether he should take drugs when given the opportunity. Viewers get to choose how the story develops to reinforce the point that the choices they make mirror those made in real life.

The campaign had appeared to attain a reasonably high level of success, and Tan was keen to understand which elements of the campaign were effective in achieving NCADA’s strategic objectives. This would help him decide how best NCADA’s communication efforts needed to change given the evolving drug landscape.

This case is intended for use in communications management, campaign planning, and other related courses at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Students who have successfully examined the case should be able to demonstrate how campaign objectives were achieved, study the significance of ‘noise’ in impeding campaign goals, examine the various audience segmentations and their characteristics, and how these affect message receptiveness, and analyse source credibility among other things.

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