Adlibbing: Inside PSAs

Everyone's An Expert

It was exciting sitting with the legendary Jack Valenti in front of the Senate Commerce Committee Thursday presenting our new campaign to teach parents that they can block age-inappropriate television content.  We are very proud of our partnership with virtually all television organizations on this campaign.  And Jack deserves tremendous credit for brokering this unprecedented collaboration among otherwise warring industries.

The campaign, which depicts parents speaking with characters from TV shows that are not suitable for young children, was the creation of McCann Erickson New York.

As with all Ad Council campaigns, the creative was rigorously tested with focus groups, and parents reported that they understood the message -- you can block programming you don't want your children to see.  Furthermore, they founds the ads funny and were motivated to go to the website, http://www.thetvboss.org/, to learn how to activate blocking technologies.

Overall, the press surrounding the creative was positive, including a story Tuesday in The Washington Post.  But it never ceases to amaze me how some reporters, fortunately just a few so far, found "experts" to criticize the creative.  (Funny how often these are college professors.)  Those who didn't like the creative felt the parents wouldn't "get it" and that the campaign should be a demonstration of the technology.

Of course, these critics didn't do any research.  And I feel it's rather condescending that they find subtlety lost on today's parents.  Plus, the TV industry has been running demonstration ads for over two years and parents still report that they don't know about the blocking technology.

But this smart creative, which parents do get, is being backed by $300 million of TV time by all broadcast, cable and satellite providers.  So I think we have an excellent chance to "move the needle" on parents' involvement in managing their children's television viewing experience.

I can't wait to report the tracking results on this new campaign.  Not only will it prove the critics wrong, more importantly, it will mean parents have taken control!

What Makes People Care About Education?

Campaigns addressing education are a large part of the Ad Council docket.  From Early Childhood Education to Parental Involvement, from Arts Education to High School Dropout Prevention and from the Importance of Math and Science for Girls to Supporting Minority Education, the Ad Council has important and clear messages for kids and parents.

But education experts, industry and government officials have issued a rallying cry around the decline in US education performance compared to the rest of the world.  We are 8th in math scores and American 15 year-olds rank 24th out of 29 developed nations in mathematics, literacy and problem solving. We have one tenth the number of math and science graduates compared to China and the rate of patented innovations has dropped dramatically compared with the rest of the world.

Thomas Friedman's "The World Is Flat" has documented this issue well and is required reading for anyone who wishes to participate in the debate about how to improve education in America to secure our standard of living and national security.

Two weeks ago, the Ad Council convened a three hour round table to probe the issue of how to use communications to address our country's looming global competitiveness crisis.  Research others have done reveals that using statistics of how the U.S. has fallen behind other countries isn't a good way to engage Americans.  It's not motivating.  So the question is, what will make people care about the quality of education in America?

With that framework in mind, more than 24 organizations representing a variety of interests had a spirited discussion on how to engage Americans to improve the quality of our education.Attendees included the Department of Education, the Gates Foundation, the American Council on Education, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, The National Association of Manufacturers, American Electronics Association and many more.  Our goal was to organize messages that need to be communicated to Americans to improve the quality of our education.

The first two target audiences came easily (and we have several campaigns already addressing them).  Not to be too simplistic, but some of the messsages include:

Kids:  We need to encourage them, help them see the relevance and importance of education, motivate them to take math and science courses, change the culture that says being smart isn't cool and get them to take an active roll in planning for college.

Parents:  Give them tools to prepare their children to enter school prepared to learn, tell them their job isn't done when they get their kids into school, that they have to be engaged, motivate them to encourage their kids to take math and science and help them prepare their kids for college.

And here's the hard part...

Adults with no school age children:  Only 27% of adults have kids in school.  Once their children have completed school, adults see no relevance to be concerned or engaged in education.  The $64,000 question is "How do you make people without kids in school care about education?"

And from a PSA perspective, if we do find a way to interest them, what is it we want them to do?  We can't do an advocacy PSA message based on our charter (plus it wouldn't get donated media).  Other than parents, what is the average American's opportunity to influence the quality of education in America?

Our group didn't have the answer.  But we do have some interesting questions to pursue.  And we also have the group's commitment to meet again, to share research and insights and collaborate on messages once we find them.

So stay tuned.