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.

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