Need for Evaluation Standards

We were recently approached by a prospective client who had been using one of the largest organizations in the country which distributes PSAs (public service advertising) campaigns. When they told us the dollar value that the other organization had supposedly generated, I was astounded. It was ten times more than the most successful campaign we had ever distributed. The prospective client was quite concerned because their board had bought into this astronomical value and to use another distributor which may not be able to match previous results would have been a significant problem.

This background establishes the need for standard standards to measure the value of public service advertising. No one knows how many organizations use PSAs as a way to communicate with their stakeholders, but it is a large number. Nearly every federal agency uses them along with states, public interest groups, associations, and non-profits, so the aggregate amount being spent on these campaigns is huge. Thus, having objective methods of measurement is key to continued credibility for the entire field of public service advertising.

For example, when we questioned one distributor’s methodology, we were told that their advertising equivalency values came from the National Association of Broadcasters. Being quite familiar with NAB, it sounded very suspicious so I called them to see if they indeed provided such data. “We do not have that kind of data and if we did, we would not give it to external parties,” the staff person at NAB told me. So much for objective data. And it is this data that distributors use to impress their clients with the success of any given campaign. Perhaps more importantly, it makes it very difficult to compare results from one distributor to another in an objective manner.

At our firm, we post our methodology statement on each client’s reporting portal, spelling out in specific detail how we calculate values, where the data comes from and what it means. We believe that the time has come for all distributors to provide similar methodology statements for the benefit of their clients as well as a way to determine how one campaign has performed against others. Being even more bold, perhaps the time has come for all companies which distribute public service materials to the media to form some type of professional organization where we could share common interests and lobby the media to provide more public service time and space for public benefit.

VETERAN’S SUICIDES – A HIDDEN CRISIS

 I recently attended a great program for CEOs of veteran-owned companies called the Veterans Institute for Procurement, funded by the Montgomery County (MD) Chamber of Commerce Foundation.  It was an intense three-day class and before getting started, each of the 30 or so students was asked to tell the rest of the class some brief personal information. After introducing myself, I said a few words about a subject that every American should care about. Each day in our country an average 18 veterans take their own lives. After I told this to my fellow students, you could see that this fact hit these people particularly hard, because we all had served our country. Many of the people in the classroom knew the feeling of bullets whizzing by their heads, perhaps had parachuted into enemy territory, or had suffered combat wounds. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/3/prweb8171201.htm.

My company recently worked with the VA in distributing a public service announcement to promote a suicide prevention hotline to address the problem.  However, everone knows the problem is surely not going to be solved by public education alone.  (Click on the above link to see the video and news release).

Here is another interesting statistic that will alarm a lot of people. According to Volunteers of America, which helps homeless people, on any given night 75,609 veterans are homeless, and twice as many experience homelessness during a year.  Right now, the number of homeless Vietnam era veterans is greater than the number of service persons who died during that war.

Already, veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are appearing in the homeless population, and since many of them experienced urban warfare – the most dangerous of all combat – they are increasingly suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

And the story gets worse. According to the U.S. Department of Labor,  the rate of unemployment among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in January,2011 was 15.2%.  “This should be a wakeup call for America,” said Paul Rieckoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “We have a definite employment problem and it is getting worse.”

The VA and other organizations are trying to do something about this growing problem, that eventually will have an adverse effect on recruiting and retention, to say nothing about how it affects families. But the sad reality is that with government cutbacks, there is not enough money available for government to solve the problem.

While many companies in the private sector do offer some assistance, helping veterans is typically not the primary mission of companies, and so the vets get lost in the shuffle.  With no one to talk to about their problems, difficulty in getting a job, which contributes to homelessness, it is not hard to figure out why the suicide rate is rising. The question becomes: what can we do to help?

America is an amazingly resilient country when we all pull together, and if ever there was a time or reason for us to do that to help our vets, it is now. Like many social problems, they will not be solved by government, companies, foundations or any other entities, all of which are comprised by we the people.  Following is a quick list of things we can do.

What We Can Do

 - Show support for our vets overseas already via either organizations such as USO, the American Legion or the many organizations that send “care packages” to our troops overseas. A Google search will bring up a long list of them. The more support our troops get while they are deployed, the less alienated they will feel when they come home.

- Help the families of veterans in your community. If you live near a family with a deployed vet, drop in on them and see if they need help. If the vet knows his family is taken care of, then it will boost his or her morale.

- Volunteer – there are opportunities ranging from the USO lounges at airports, to packing boxes to be sent to vets serving overseas, or perhaps become a suicide prevention counselor.

- Spread the word.  Send a link to this blog to your friends, neighbors and colleagues, particularly if they are veterans or have sons and daughters serving our armed forces.

- Most importantly – if you know a vet, talk to them. Find out if they are having problems adjusting. Buy them a meal. Take them to the local VA hospital to get help. Show them some love and appreciation for their support.

I was in London about a year ago and I saw all these people wearing a red poppy flower in their lapel, or perhaps pinned to their blouses, and they were everywhere. Being inquisitive, I asked a cabby (also sporting a red poppy) what these were for. “They are to support Remembrance Day,” he said, “which is our way of remembering the members of our armed forces who have died on duty since WWI.”

Unfortunately, for too many Americans, the Fourth of July, Memorial Day and Armed Forces Day are just another holiday to take the kids to the beach. England well knows how to appreciate their veterans and we should learn from them.

Maybe if we would all do a little more to help our veterans and show appreciation for their service, more of them would enjoy their senior years instead of taking their own lives, or spending their nights out on the cold, mean streets.

While we want to do more, to see one of our projects to show our appreciation for our armed forces, go to http://www.goodwillcommunications.com/PsaCampaigns.aspx?clid=51.

Extending Your Reach Via Fusion Marketing

It is very rare that a non-profit – whether it is a private sector organization or a government agency – is working on an issue with total exclusivity.  In other words, typically there will be several organizations working on any given issue, but perhaps approaching it from different angles.  Unfotunately too often there is duplication of effort which wastes both time and money.  Often by joining forces, organizations with a similar mission can cross-pollinate to create greater synergy.  

An example, is a collaborative effort between the American Savings Education Council, the Social Security Administration, and the U.S. Savings Bonds program.  Each of them contributed funds to distribute a PSA on the importance of saving for retirement, because that was a message that all three of them had been disseminating separately.  The TV PSA tags had the above logo on them with website addresses for each.  Evaluation reports showed what each got from the collaborative effort.

 In another example, when Hillary Clinton  was the First Lady, she was the spokesperson for a campaign on colo-rectcal cancer.  Twenty-three separate organizations formed a “roundtable” to disseminate information on the issue to the media and their respective stakeholders. Each of them was mentioned in PSA packaging materials and on a special website for the campaign.

 In still another example, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons collaborated with the Auto Alliance on a campaign to prevent distracted driving.

 You can take almost any issue – aging, veterans’ programs, breast cancer – and you will find several, if not a dozen organizations, working on the issue.  Often it makes sense to pool human, financial and marketing resources to generate a bigger impact than working alone, and each organization brings different skill sets or stakeholders to the table.

It doesn’t cost a lot but you get a lot out of the strategic alliance – otherwise known as fusion marketing.

The Case for Advertising Equivalency

“Ad value equivalency is conceptually wrong,” PR expert says.

 That is a direct quote by David Rockland, partner and CEO of Ketchum Pleon Change and Global Research, and he went on to say that “If you can’t recognize it as a bad idea, then you probably shouldn’t be in PR.”

 It could be a matter of semantics, because the public service advertising and PR worlds are quite different in the way exposure occurs. It is important to address this issue, however, because the public service advertising profession has used advertising equivalency for more than 3 decades as a way to measure the value of a campaign. 

To start the discussion, let’s review Mr. Rockland’s  statement more carefully and try to find out what he and his colleagues at the Institute for Public Relations define as a better way to measure campaign impact.  At the recent European Summit on Measurement held in Barcelona, leaders from 30 countries met to discuss global standards and practices to evaluate public relations programs.

 One of those delegates, Andre Manning, global head of external communications at Royal Philips Electronics, said that his firm has “reworked its PR approach to ‘outcome communications,’ and totally abandoned ad value equivalency.”  My response to this is, what leads these PR experts to think that anyone uses advertising equivalency value (AEV) exclusively as a measurment of success?

Everyone we know who engages in public relations and/or public service advertising programs uses advertising equivalency as just one of the important metrics of measuring campaign outcome.  But why use it at all is the question that is being raised.   Several reasons.

 First, everyone can do the math.  They know if they spent X dollars to create and distribute a campaign, and got back Y in ad equivalency value,  then they know their ROI.

 Secondly, AEV inherently reflects many different aspects of media values in the way it is calculated.  For example, in calculating the AEV for broadcast TV exposure, the size of the market, (as defined by population), the prominence of the station within the market, the time of day the exposure occurred, the length, duration and frequency of the message are all reflected by the AEV.    

 As the first firm to develop PSA evaluation software back in 1983, we compiled reports showing details of media exposure and ad equivalency. We also demonstrated the impact this exposure had on our mission – recruiting young people into the U.S. Coast Guard.  We used graphs to show a direct correlation between the amount of PSA exposure we were getting (the same would be true of PR editorial exposure) and the number of 800 phone leads coming into our call center.  Prior to the Internet, other methods used to measure outcome were literature requests and the number of volunteers recruited, if that was the campaign goal.

We are not a PR firm and the types of campaigns we distribute to the media are very different from the standard public relations effort designed to generate earned media.  On the other hand, we do not think it is wise to completely discard an evaluation metric that is based on solid media logic and we probably could all agree that it should only be one method for determining the success or outcome for any given public education campaign.

PSA Production – Five Tips For Producing Effective Public Service Announcements

Five Tips on PSA Production

1.              Where do we start with PSA production? 

Before embarking on PSA production for any campaign, it is critical to understand the full context of the message, the audience, the existing ‘brand’, and any collateral materials that will be distributed in conjunction with the public service announcement. We do not employ any kind of magic ‘template’ for a PSA, as every message is unique, and needs to be custom tailored to best reach its audience. PSA production techniques may range widely based on who the audience is and writing style, shooting and editing should ultimately be dictated based on what is known about the target audience and any secondary audiences. All nuances of the campaign should be considered – what is the end call to action? What do people already think or know about the subject matter? What are some of the common hot buttons around the issue? What are some of the common objections to the issue/cause? What is the projected life span of the PSA? All of these answers, along with a host of additional questions and answers will best prepare you to create a campaign that most effectively leverages your messaging platform, and speaks directly to your audience. 

2.              How much will the public service announcement cost? 

Cost-affecting factors include PSA production parameters such as: how many shooting days? Shooting on film vs. video? How large a crew? Specialty equipment needed like cranes, Steadicams, dollys, etc? Location shooting or studio shooting? Customized props or sets? Union or non-union actors? What types of talent? Are there music and talent usage rights? Library music or original composition? How elaborate a graphics / animation package?, etc. We pride ourselves on our ability to create public service announcement campaigns based around client dictated budgets whether they be small, medium or large and on the fact that we can execute effective campaigns based on either very established brands, or beginning from scratch.

3.              Where/When will the public service announcement air?

It is critical to manage expectations with regards to public service announcement airings. Unlike paid commercial advertising, the airing of a PSA is entirely at the discretion of local station PSA directors. These people are literally inundated with PSA products and pitches from various groups trying to get their messages out. Depending on the timeliness of the issue, the personal sensibilities of the PSA directors, the relevance of the message to the stations’ specific demographic and a host of other intangibles, there is never any guarantee that a public service announcement will see the airwaves. Subsequently, it is important to strategize your PSA marketing campaign to best utilize the information on hand to maximize station airings.

4.              How long should our public service announcement be? 

Typically, a PSA is versioned as both a:30 and a:60 second spot. This increases likelihood of airings since stations can have some flexibility in filling in either time slot. Often:10′s and / or:15′s are created as well. 

5.              What can we expect from the PSA production process? 

Our ‘typical’ process would unfold as follows: 

- Discovery / Q&A – Concept Development (we would propose several generally sketched out ideas for client approval) 

- Final Approach (based on feedback from Concept Development stage, we would fully flesh out a particular concept) 

- Pre-production (planning, storyboards (when appropriate), schedule development and hiring of key individuals) 

- Execution (PSA production, post-production and final formatting) 

- Delivery to Distributor (we work closely with the distributor to ensure delivery of high quality formats and appropriate collateral such as final script, screen grabs for packaging, etc.)

Author: Dave Braun

Five Promotional Ideas For Non-Profit Awareness Campaign

Non-profit agencies often find themselves working on public awareness advertising and marketing campaigns. While radio PSAs and flyers are good ways of spreading the word, promotional items can really launch a message in a way that it can’t be ignored. Whether your message is a greener Earth or cleaner lungs, here are five ideas for non-profit campaigns using promotional items.

Get peer leaders on board 

One of the most effective methods for getting your marketing message out to the widest audience possible is to get peer leaders on board first. That works just as well in the executive business community as it does in the world of teens and school. Start your campaign with an event targeted at peer leaders, using promotional items to reinforce your point. Give out promotional t-shirts and conference folders emblazoned with your brand logo and advertising message. The conference participants will wear them or carry them, bringing additional publicity to your cause and highlight your brand and organisations message even further.

Get viral.

The tactics used by guerilla marketers work just as well for non profit PSAs. Put your slogan or logo and web site address on a range of inexpensive promotional items and start handing them out on street corners. The visibility will raise brand awareness and the curiosity factor will bring people to hear your message. If you choose wearable promotional items, every one that you hand out will reach dozens of other eyes.

Give out goodies in return for a pledge or work.

Give to get is a time-honored tradition in the advertising world, and it can work for you too. Need signatures on a petition? Hand out car stickers to those who sign. Looking for a commitment to eschew teen drinking? Give out “I signed The Pledge” lanyards or jelly bracelets. Be sure to choose promotional items that have a high visibility factor to ensure that your campaign gets the most visibility possible..

Use promotional items for membership drives.

Whether you hand out an inexpensive promo item to every new member or choose higher value items as recruitment incentives to existing members, promotional items can boost your membership numbers into overdrive. Increase their draw by choosing highly visible promotional items like t-shirts and carry bags as your message carriers.

Choose promotional items that are appropriate for your message.

If you’re raising green or environmental awareness, it doesn’t make much sense to hand out disposable items or those made from petroleum based products. Make sure that everything you hand out fits your specific message – but don’t be afraid to give it a clever and novel twist. Hand out imprinted breath strips for an anti-smoking campaigns with the message “You wouldn’t need these if you didn’t smoke” or mug snugs imprinted with the message “I Don’t Drink!” for a teen drinking awareness campaign.

For additional information on promotional items, business gifts and marketing promotional products why not check out the market leading online suppliers where you will find a massive range of items to choose from and also get exceptionally low prices combined with highly professional fast service levels.

Author: Gareth Parkin

Crowd Sourcing: Engaging Your Audience

Prior to the raging popularity of You Tube, video crowd sourcing became a popular way for families and would-be cinematographers to get their moment of fame shown on such popular TV shows as America’s Funniest Videos.  Once the broadband issue was resolved, allowing people to upload videos to the Internet, it opened the floodgates for video sharing, just one type of crowdsourcing.

Perceived benefits of crowdsourcing include:

• Problems can be explored at comparatively little cost, and often very quickly.
• Payment is by results or even omitted
• The organization can tap a wider range of talent than might be present in its own organization.
• By listening to the crowd, organizations gain first-hand insight on their customers’ desires.
• The community may feel a brand-building kinship with the crowdsourcing organization, which is the result of an earned sense of ownership through contribution and collaboration.

Enterprising organizations, faced with lower budgets and a desire for greater audience engagement, are encouraging amateur videographers to produce videos addressing their critical issues.  This has become a low-cost way to get high-quality videos produced, and you pay for them only if you use them.

 Among many federal government agencies and some non-profits, the idea for video crowdsourcing has gone viral itself, via contests that pay a cash stipend to the best video idea. 

 The Environmental Protection Agency, for example, created a PSA contest with the winner getting $2,500, and a chance for their PSA to be shown both online and at their annual conference.  This was followed by another EPA PSA contest dedicated to water quality, which received over 200 entries.

The EPA sees this as an opportunity to lower production costs, get the public to participate in spreading their messages, and at the same time create messages which resonate with the public.

The Alliance to Save Energy, another environmental protection organization, staged a video contest that offered winners $5,000, with private sector firms donating the cash, as well as other premium items, to leading entrants.

Getting Greater Mileage

If there is any limitation to what has been done so far with video contests, it’s that most of the PSAs and video clips have had a fairly limited audience, relying mostly on You Tube, where they must compete against hundreds of thousands of other video clips. 

Since many of these video clips were produced as PSAs, or could be edited down to PSA lengths, they could be easily and inexpensively distributed to the media, thus getting much more mileage and exposure.  Using our CablePAK shared reel distribution service, for example, would typically generate $750,000 in verified ad equivalency value, with the PSAs being used in 41 states, 147 cities and on 155 stations.

Beyond videos, there are numerous other applications for crowdsourcing, such as enlisting volunteers, developing idea communities, and product/service testing.  Some companies, such as IdeaScale, WhyzeGroup, and Inno Centive, specialize in delivering crowds, so that you can instantly tap into a pre-select group of people who want to participate in your idea or project.

One firm, Imaginatik, has developed something called IdeaCentral Mobile, which solicits ideas from employees and stakeholders that can be loaded to smartphones or other handheld devices with web browser capabilities.

This idea engages audiences on the move, allows them to keep abreast of new ideas, offer ideas of  their own, and enjoy secure access.

“Despite the jargon name, crowdsourcing is a very real and important business idea,” says Jennifer Alsever, the author of What is Crowdsourcing?

“The idea is to tap into the collective intelligence of the public to complete tasks a company would normally either perform itself or outsource to a third-party provider. More importantly, it enables managers to expand the size of their talent pool while also gaining deeper insight into what stakeholders really want,” she said.

You Deserve Your Share

As shown in this historic photo, 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in 1787 to iron out the rules that would forever govern our country. When they wrote the first three words in fancy enlarged script, they did not begin with words such as “For Special Interests….To Be Excluded…or For the Elite Only…”

Perhaps the three most important words to ever be inscribed on an American document, are those which bind our government to its people. When our Founding Fathers wrote: “We the People”….  they made it crystal clear that in a free and open democracy, the people rule.

Yet there are many signs that the people no longer rule the country that we all pay for with our hard-earned taxes.  There are very clear signs that special interests have run amok in Washington, tainting the political process to the point that the system is no longer responsive to the average American. 

The growing popularity of the Tea Party…long-serving members of Congress stepping down due to frustrations of dealing with the system…and the increasing number of lobbyists, with huge chests of cash to spend on our elected representatives, are all examples of a government that is not putting the people first.

It is beyond the purpose of this post to address these situations, because if all the powers of the free world cannot fix some of these problems, the author of this post certainly cannot.  However, maybe we can at least change one thing – to get our government to do what is right, what is fair, and what is legal.  If we can get them to observe the laws  governing how federal contracts are issued – laws which they themselves wrote – then that is no small thing.

To accomplish this elusive goal, Goodwill Communications has joined with a new support group called WWW.OPENCOMPETITION.BIZ.  Our mission is very narrow, clear and focused.  This group is not Democrat, Republican, or Independent in our ideology.  Philosophically, we want one simple thing – we want our government to give every individual and company the chance to compete on a level playing field. Pragmatically, we want something almost equally as simple – legal, fair and open competition when bidding on government contracts. And while we are at it, is it too much to have the money that is spent, to be spent wisely with some accountability?  After all, it is our money, is it not?

Consider a few facts:

●        According to FedSpending.org, a project of OMB Watch, the federal  government spends an average of $344 billion annually on external contracts, amounting to $3.1 trillion over the past 9 years.

 ●        While government agencies are supposed to evaluate the performance of all companies that enter into federal contracts worth more than $100,000, an investigation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says performance assessments were made for less than one-third of the 23,000 contracts it   surveyed.

●        The GAO found that one contractor defaulted on a $280 million munitions contract that was awarded despite the company’s history of defaulting on previous contracts. At least eight contractors working on reconstruction in Iraq received new contracts despite being terminated for defaulting on earlier jobs.

●        In just one example of government contracting with which we are familiar, the feds spent approximately $825 million of taxpayer money with absolutely no evaluation of impact.  The GAO examined 105 Public Service Ad campaigns distributed by federal Agencies from October 2002 through March, 2005.   According to the GAO report, the campaigns cost the American taxpayers $152 million, or an average of $1.447 per campaign, and 57 of these  campaigns had not been evaluated for effectiveness.  In other words, the money was spent with absolutely no accountability.

According to an article in the Congressional Quarterly, [some of the campaigns] “carry a distinct whiff of pop faddishness…” and went on to say that a number of the other campaigns reviewed by the GAO were “extensions of lobbying mission statements…” which should not have been created in the first place.

 ●        The Advertising Council, a favorite of federal contracting departments, is getting an estimated $80 million1 in federal contracts handed to them as a special set-aside under the sole source rule.  The sole source set aside was meant to give government agencies a way to issue a contract when there was  only one qualified bidder who could do the work. It is hard to imagine any area of American enterprise which would not have at least two, if not more firms which could do whatever work is required in a procurement.  In the case of the Ad Council, there are at least ten companies in the country which do what they do, and at a fraction of the cost.  Above  is a list of all the Ad Council’s contracts with the federal government at this time.

 Let’s face facts:  When there is no competition, the bidder can charge anything they want, and the government has no checks and balances on whether the cost is fair and competitive.

 Who Stands to Benefit?

Faced with these realities, the individuals and the companies that provide, or could provide services to the government in just one sector – advertising and marketing services – is very large, probably numbering into the thousands nationally.

Unfortunately, in spite of our collective experience, we stand almost no chance at getting work from our government that takes our tax dollars from us, but favors special interests.  Talk about Taxation Without Representation!

 “I’m Mad as Hell and I am Not Taking it Anymore”

So with these facts and trends as background, what is the solution to getting more business from our government and making our government more accountable to the people?

As we see it there are two options. First, do nothing and accept the status quo.  Or, fight back. You may remember the movie, Network, in which a newscaster named Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch)  is dressed in a beige coat with his wet, gray hair plastered to his head. He stands up during the middle of his newscast saying, “I’m as mad as Hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

According to the American Film Institute‘s list of 100 great movie quotes, it ranks as one of the most memorable scenes in film history.  What was even more funny and poignant is that soon after seeing Howard utter that famous line, people all over the city began throwing open their windows and yelling the phrase out into the street.  That, my friends, is how revolutions start.

It is time to throw open the windows and let the federal government – our government….the one we own and support with our tax dollars…. know that we are not going to let them dole out  special contracting deals to favored contractors.

If you agree with anything in this post, go to our website at WWW.OPENCOMPETITION.BIZ and join our group.  If you do not, then you have no one to blame if you do not get your share of the federal pie.

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1 The Ad Council currenly has 24 federal contracts, and at the time this post was written we are researching the value of these contracts and how they were obtained.  What we have learned so far is that all of the contracts were awarded to them under non-competitive arrangements.

“Can I Have Some Prime With Top Markets on the Side?”

Years ago I belonged to a great organization called the National Broadcast Association for Community Affairs – NBACA for short.  What made it such a terrific organization for anyone in the public service business was first, it was the only game in town…there were no other organizations representing TV public service directors.  Secondly, it gave all of us who were trying to engage these important gatekeepers a chance for serious face time, as compared to anonymously sending our PSAs through the mail, never to meet the person on the other end.  Finally, it gave us a chance to network with other folks in our business to exchange ideas and techniques. Alas, some radio people took over about 10 years ago and held the last national convention in of all places – Los Angeles, not exactly the center of public service thought – and the demise of the organization came shortly thereafter.

Very recently we had a client ask the important, but not very astute question:  “Why aren’t we getting more prime time with our TV PSAs…and while I am asking the question why not more top market exposure?”  Without being flip or smug when answering this question, my mind wandered back to the NBACA conference held in New York City when this same question was posed to the community affairs director for WABC TV.  The person from the non-profit stood up to ask a panel of TV public service directors why her organization was not getting more prime time PSA usage.  The woman from WABC looked at her with all due seriousness and said: “honey, when you ain’t buying the time, all time is good.”  The room shook with laughter, because never had so much truth been declared in so few words.

In looking back on this exchange, it might be appropriate to ask another corresponding question.  If stations gave away a lot of their prime time as public service, they would have very little to sell – and we all know that revenue is the lifeblood of their operations, just as it is for all the rest of us running a business.  If stations gave a lot of prime time away for free, then what would motivate the large advertisers to purchase it at top prices?

In thinking further about what raised this question in the first place, it shows a pretty deep naiveté among the non-profit community as far as what motivates broadcasters – and the media in general – to use public service materials.  Having attended 10 NBACA conferences in the past, where I learned so much from the broadcasters themselves about what is important to them, perhaps now is a good time to review some truths about what matters to the media, and broadcast TV stations in particular. 

At one of the NBACA conferences, I used to see a very quiet guy always standing off to the side of the room, looking like maybe he knew this stuff cold.  Having seen him at a number of their meetings, I decided one day to go up and introduce myself.  His name was Jerry Wishnow, and over time, we became very good friends and colleagues.  Jerry taught me some very, very valuable insights as to what matters most to broadcast community affairs folks, because he literally wrote the book on the subject titled: “Broadcast Public Affairs: The Activist Approach.”

One of the things Jerry taught me – and I use this all the time in my presentations – is something called The Four R’s of Broadcasting, as shown in this graphic.  All of us understand stations need revenue, but how do they get it…that brings up the next  “R” which is Ratings. 

We all have seen how TV stations put their best shows on the air during the sweeps periods when local station ratings are determined, and many stations will increase local advertising to try to build their audience.  Because ad rates (Revenue)  the stations can charge are based on those ratings, you can immediately see the relationship between these two R’s.

Now how about the other two…  Relevance and Recognition?  This is where public service programming comes into the discussion, along with all the other kinds of programming that broadcasters engage in to serve their audience.  Before going on with the discussion, we need to point out a very, very important fact.  TV stations are not mandated by the FCC to run a certain level of PSAs.  They never were mandated to do so – with the exception of the Children’s TV Act – and so if your notion is that stations have to run your spots, then you suffer from an illusion.   

That being the case, you need to provide materials to stations that are locally Relevant because why….?  That gets the station Recognition in the community.  Now you can see how these four R’s are all connected in a very meaningful way.  You provide engaging messages to the broadcaster…they air them because their local community cares about the issue or message, meaning more eyeballs tune into the station with the most enlighted community affairs approach, and bingo, that station gets better ratings and more advertising revenue.

Now we cannot say that this model works this way in every community, at all times. But, if you read any of the articles on the PSA Research Center dedicated to cause marketing at http://www.psaresearch.com/bibcause.html, you will see one example after another of how a non-profit developed win-win-win approaches with the media, because they all gained something from the relationship.

Now back to the woman who raised this question in the first place.  When we said that it was not realistic to expect much in the way of prime time PSA placements, that does not mean you are going to get “junk time” either (midnight to 7AM).  One of the great things about the A.C. Nielsen SpotTrac monitoring technology is that we get data from them showing daypart usage for 6 different times during the broadcast “day.”  This graph shows that as many as  two-thirds of all PSAs air in the best times of day and this usage data is fairly consistent among all campaigns.

Incidentally, if you don’t think anyone is home watching TV during the day then maybe Procter & Gamble should fire their ad agency from buying  so many commercials during this daypart.

Moreover, there are many things PSA producers can do to increase the chances their PSAs will even make it on the air, which length they will use and for how long.  In an attempt to keep this post as brief as possible, you may want to visit the FAQs on the PSA Research Center where these, and many other questions, are answered.  http://www.psaresearch.com/faq.html

Interestingly, a reporter from China contacted us recently and indicated she was writing a story about the PSA world in her country, which I found to be fascinating because there – as one might expect – the government plays a more dominant role in the broadcasting industry.  We would all love local broadcasters to provide more prime time to important national issues and causes, but not sure if more government regulation would help in this particular case.  The National Association of Broadcasters tells us they provide something on the order of $10 billion annually in support of public causes.  The fact is the media do – and have done – a marvelous job in supporting the non-profit community, and permitting us to create a dialogue with their viewers, listeners and readers.

In workshops we have given, we often end the discussion with the question…”how many of you regularly thank the media in some formal way for the support they give to your organization?”  In a room of 40 people, typically three or four hands are raised.  It is sad that someone would stand up in a meeting and ask the media why they are not giving us more, when we have given them so little in return.  Think about that the next time you review your Nielsen reports and are not happy that most of your spots did not air during prime time in the largest markets.

 

Patriotism Does Not Take a Snow Day

In this post, I am going to try to do two things that appear to be disconnected, but in reality, they are not. The first part of it is to show that even in the worst weather, our patriotic young soldiers who guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington Cemetery don’t take  snow days.

They walk their silent vigil day in and day out, 24/7, 365, no matter what the weather is. And this is such an honor to them, these young soldiers stand in line to be considered for this duty. One assumes that given a huge storm such as the one Washington DC experienced recently, the Generals of Greatness would give them a day off. Not true…not even close. They march, day in and day out, no matter what, and it is an unbroken tradition that has been going on for over 73 years, or 26,645 days.

From 1948 to the present, members of the U.S. Army’s 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment (“The Old Guard”) have walked their post, hearing very little else than the sound of their shoes as they pace across cold marble.

In some ways, perhaps this march to honor the fallen, strikes to the essence of what America is all about.   Some nations call us a Paper Tiger, but we are the first ones to come to the defense of freedom seeking people.

Some call us uninvolved and disinterested in the problems of the world. Maybe they did not read about the Marshall Plan and how we rebuilt Europe after WWII.

Maybe they do not know that General Douglas MacArthur and his staff helped a devastated Japan rebuild itself, institute a democratic government, and chart a course that made Japan one of the world’s leading industrial powers. As the interim leader of Japan from 1945 until 1948, MacArthur’s staff drafted a new constitution that renounced war and reduced the emperor to a figurehead. This constitution remains in use in Japan to this day.

Maybe these critics are not reading what is going on in Haiti, and how the U.S. government, dozens of non-profit organizations, and thousands of U.S. citizens are the driving force to help the suffering people there.

To end this post, I am going to provide a link to a video that is on You Tube and the spokesman is Newt Gingrich. I am not necessarily a Newt supporter, but when you hear his views, you may come to like what he says. What I do respect about Newt is that he is incredibly bright. A PhD in History from the University of Georgia; he is an ex-Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and he just makes sense. “Making sense” is a relative term, so watch Newt’s video and decide for yourself. If you do not like what he says at the front end of his presentation, please, please view the final part, which is why I titled this post, “Patriotism Does Not Take a Snow Day.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtjfMjjce2Y