The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) and Ad Council have teamed up to create a new, interactive multimedia anti-steroid public awareness campaign targeted at teenagers. The anti-steroid campaign was funded by United States Olympic sponsor Johnson & Johnson and created pro bono by Omnicom’s TBWA\Chiat\Day agency (”USOC and Ad Council take on roids,” August 18).

The ad agency had a lot of fun creating DontBeAnAsterisk.com anti-steroid campaign and so can you! They created an interactive flash-based soccer game where visitors try to score goals while avoiding the “asterisks” (which represent anabolic steroids). Unfortunately, it is a whole lot more fun to run into the asterisks and get “juiced up” because your soccer player’s muscles magically increase in size to bodybuilder proportions! This is according to my six-year old who kept running into the asterisks explaining that ”it’s fun to watch [the player] get bigger.” Cute. This certainly will send kids the message that steroids are bad.

The Ad Council is clueless about the problem of steroid use in sports and society suggesting that steroid use has previously been restricted to “male wrestlers” only to have expanded recently to other aspects of society.

“There is an increasing number of teens using steroids — it’s not just male wrestlers anymore,” said Priscilla Natkins, EVP and director of client services at the Ad Council.

I don’t think anyone ever thought the use of anabolic steroids was limited to “male wrestlers.” The statement is probably reflective of the amount of research that went into the campaign.

The anti-steroid campaign is typical of drug prohibition scare tactics. DontBeAnAsterisk.com demonizes anabolic steroids with the message that “steroids seriously destroy your body.” But the main goal of the campaign is to convince teenagers that steroid use will result in a loss of credibility. The campaign attempts to convince visitors that a steroid user is “inauthentic,” “fake,” a “poser” and a “joke.”

The campaign includes the typical questionable steroid side effects such as “liver tumors” along with some new side effects of “extra fat around the face” and “enlargement of facial bones.” There must be scientific documentation somewhere on the website to support these two new side effects. Surely, they did not just make up these side effects up based on sportwriters assertions that Barry Bonds head grew as a result of anabolic steroids.