Unlocking the power of public information campaigns

You’ve seen them throughout your life. From the 60s to the 90s, the public information campaign, “The Toughest Job You’ll Ever Love” built awareness for President Kennedy’s Peace Corps initiative. In the 70s and 80s, a campaign to support the UNCF, “A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste” helped to graduate more than 350,000 minority students from college. One of the best known is “The Truth” anti-smoking campaign aimed at America’s youth. Founded in 1999, this campaign is credited with decreasing teen smoking from 23% in 2000 to less than 2% today. Or more recently, perhaps you have seen the powerful “Tips from Former Smokers” campaign from the CDC. This campaign is lauded for saving an estimated 129,000 lives. These are examples of advertising that has made a difference in Americans’ lives. Why? Because they unlocked the awesome power of Public Information Campaigns.

Campaigns With Purpose 

While all advertising campaigns have goals, Public Information Campaigns work to support a greater good. They’re campaigns from government agencies, public health organizations or public policy advocates, all implemented with the same goal in mind: to help people. Here’s how they do it.

• They create awareness of issues that matter to people.
• Such campaigns can educate people and inform them.
• Often, they are intended to motivate, encourage, and influence people to adopt positive behaviors, or avoid negative behaviors.
• These campaigns can address public need and work for the public good.
• They can seek to change or form informed attitudes and perceptions.

Examples of different types of Public Information Campaigns include:

• Public Health
• Public Safety
• Prevention of Harm
• Public Service

Positive Communication With Citizens

 From a public policy perspective, Public Information Campaigns are one of the ways that government and agencies can effectively communicate with the public en masse. In so doing, it is a great service to effectively communicate with the people, sharing information that is useful and relevant. This communication has been found to be effective – in the National Library of Medicine one study published in Lancet, the leading journal of medical research states, “We conclude that mass media campaigns can produce positive changes or prevent negative changes in health related behaviors across large populations.”

These campaigns can be successful despite competing with:

• Intense, ongoing product marketing
• A cluttered, fractured market environment
• Behaviors based on years of habit or addiction
• Powerful social norms

The reason they can be successful is that they provide value and information to consumers. When consumers recognize that these messages are useful to them or the ones they love, they’re more receptive to the campaign.

What Makes a Public Information Campaign Powerful? 

Over the years, the “Click It or Ticket” campaign from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has worked to increase the use of seatbelts across the US. According to the NHTSA, the campaign increased seatbelt use in across the nation to a level of 91.9%. Yet another example of public information campaigns working to save lives.

The key factors for success include:

• Well-defined goals and objectives
• Effective identification of the target audiences (including audience segments)
• Development of messaging based on research, evidence and analysis of key insights
• A strategy and plan that is shaped around the Audience, Brand and Challenges
• Keen attention to such factors as budget, timing, and audience characteristics
• When possible, testing of creative and message concepts
• Campaign execution across multiple platforms, including P.R.
• Coordination with and inclusion of partner organizations and key stakeholders
• Clear understanding of measurable goals, with a plan to be able to prove results
• Supporting factors and resources that help compel desired response
• Adequate funding for a sustained campaign over time
• Champions within the department or agency initiating the campaign

With the “Click It or Ticket” campaign, all these factors were part of the plan and were executed beautifully. To call out a few: The campaign was developed as a combination of education and enforcement. With more and more states passing seatbelt laws, it became possible to mobilize coordinated campaign messaging with law enforcement initiatives. The campaign communicated that wearing a seatbelt saves lives, and that it’s the law. It also communicated that law enforcement officers can pull over any driver they see without a seat belt and ticket them with fines to be paid. The campaign had adequate funding to run on national television including sports broadcasts, especially effective to reach men (who have historically been less likely to use seat belts). Plus local funding was made possible through state Public Safety agencies. The messages were simple, memorable, appealed to the logic of increased safety in an accident. The campaign has run consistently for many years.

Work That Matters

At Fuseideas, we feel it is a privilege to create Public Information Campaigns and we’ve worked on campaigns such as:

• The “Take Charge, Take the Test” HIV campaign
• Massachusetts Tobacco Control’s “Second Hand Smoke” campaign
• Maine Highway Safety Coalition’s “Think About It” campaign addressing distracted driving and speeding
• Rhode Island Department of Health’s Veterans Suicide Prevention campaign
• Mass General Hospital’s ADHD and Brain Waves outreach for research participants
• Mass General Hospital’s Cancer Genome Project
• The Central Western Maine Workforce Development Board’s “Disconnected Youth” campaign
• The Maine Department of Health and Human Services – Office of Behavioral Health “StrengthenME” mental health and wellness campaign

We know these are campaigns that matter because of the results we have generated with our client partners and the positive impact they’ve had on peoples’ lives.