By John Ingold

Larry Weisberg's office, the last one on a winding hallway in the corner of Macky Auditorium, is a far cry from Madison Avenue. It just hasn't seemed like that lately.

Weisberg, an associate professor of advertising, has been hard at work over the last few months on two high-profile ad campaigns: one that encourages responsible drinking and one designed to bring bright out-of-state students to CU.

The campaigns couldn't be any more different.

The responsible-drinking campaign was sponsored by CU Chancellor Richard Byyny's Standing Committee on Substance Abuse (SCOSA) and was designed by and for students. And in the campaign's racy content, it shows.

Ads designed for out-of-state recruiting have a very different tone because they are designed to appeal to parents.

Alcohol awareness

A series of ads designed by the SCOSA student team ran in several Boulder newspapers, KBCO-FM radio and on the sides of RTD buses for the first six weeks of the semester. Weisberg said research showed the first six weeks is when most alcohol-related incidents occur on campus.

The campaign began as a class project last semester when Weisberg, who serves on SCOSA, asked if anyone in his senior-level advertising campaigns class would be interested in working on the project. Ten people volunteered, and the project went so well that when the team presented its ideas to SCOSA last semester, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Jean Kim authorized funding for the campaign this semester.

And the rather risqué ads got some attention. One ad showed two condoms: an erect one with the caption, "A few drinks," and a limp one with the caption, "A few too many."

Another ad read, "Before you get wasted tonight, consider the tests you may have to take tomorrow." Below, it gave telephone numbers for confidential pregnancy and HIV examinations.

"Two things are going on here," Weisberg said. "Males and females at this age are very interested in sex, and we're acknowledging that. We realize that people under 21 drink. We're telling anybody who drinks to do it responsibly. We're not telling them, 'Don't drink,' or, 'Don't have sex.' It's not our place to pass judgment on whether they drink or have sex. We're just telling them to act responsibly."

Weisberg admitted he told students on at least one occasion to tone down their ideas, but he also encouraged them to push the line pretty hard, which he hoped would get people's attention.

This spring, Weisberg will hold a competition among advertising students for the best alcohol awareness campaign idea, and the winning campaign will run the first six weeks of the fall 1999 semester.

Out-of-state recruiting

The out-of-state recruiting campaign was designed by Weisberg, Associate Professor Brett Robbs and Norm Shearer ('97), an art director at McClain Finlon Advertising in Denver.

"We wanted to convey to parents that the University of Colorado is an excellent academic institution," Weisberg said. "We were concerned that the image of this university, outside of Colorado, did not reflect its outstanding academic qualities — that we were known more for the beauty of our area and the football team.”

Bobbi Barrow, executive director of institutional relations at CU, approached Weisberg and Robbs last year with those concerns.

"We needed to get the news out there about our academic reputation," she said. "Our academic programs have become quite competitive, and their reputations haven't increased proportionately."

Weisberg, Robbs and Shearer then began working on ads to promote the University's qualities in four areas chosen by Barrows: the environmental studies programs, the business entrepreneurial program, the combined bachelor's and master's degree program and the university's commitment to using technology in education.

The ads were intended not only to depict the quality of the programs, Robbs said, but to also portray the University as being warm and approachable.

"The ads were designed to be simple and surprising and to leave the audience with a smile," Robbs said.

All of the ads directed readers to a special Web site — mountains.colorado.edu — where they could find additional information about all of the University's programs. "There's an impression that colleges are ivory-towered, that they're snobbish," Weisberg said. "And these ads are designed to project an image of being approachable and warm — that we're not taking ourselves so seriously.