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This is a good ad. It has arresting imagery (do you see what I did there) and a clear message that tells me something I didn't know. No one can criticise an ad for relaying news in a cut-through way.

It is great to see a public informa­tion message that doesn't feature shock imagery or voice­overs threatening dire consequences. 

The strategy is close to the one for benefit fraud - you cannot hide the signs, you will be caught and the punish­ment is serious. 

It is also a good strategy to take a general belief, such as drugs' impact upon the user's eyes, and turn it into a hard and unavoidable truth. This way the ad is going with the popular perception, not against it.

Talking to young people about drugs is always going to be tricky and this approach circumvents the pitfalls of being too patronising or authorit­arian. It is hard to laugh it off as an embarrassing attempt to ‘get down with the kids'.

However, it is fascinating how ads, even if they are as clear and simple as this, are decoded by viewers.

Look at the You­Tube comments and you'll see lots about loving the cute little aliens.  Silly as it might sound, the similar­ity between these characters and aliens from popular movies and ads is hard to miss.

The feeling that this could be another PlayStation ad does rather undermine its strength.

More disappointing are the other aspects of the campaign. Given the COI's record of multimedia camp­aigns that touch and involve their audiences in many ways, I was disap­pointed that this ad was not a gateway to a bigger presence, partic­ularly online.

I searched ‘drug driving' as instruct­ed by the ad, but the ‘think' campaign website was very dry and factual, and far from engaging.

There is nothing to share, enjoy or adapt within this campaign. There is lots to read and learn, but is that what young drug-takers want to do?

This is my overall concern with this campaign - it is very show-and-tell, rather than engage-and-participate. No attempt has been made to really get into the mindset of a young drug-taking audience, and there is little for them to react to in an emotional or visceral way. 

I like this ad as a piece of simple communication, but hope the subse­quent executions add more colour and connection to the message.

Watch Super Troopers for a different way of bringing this subject to life. Funny, maybe, but certainly something for the audience to start talking about.