CASE HISTORY: A Multi-Organizational Approach to Public Education

The seeds for the "Choose to Save" education program were first planted in 1995 as the Employee Benefit Research Institute worked with the US Department of Labor on ways to implement a public education campaign on the importance of savings and financial security.

The Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of the Treasury joined with over 100 private and public sector partners to launch such a program in July of 1995. At that time EBRI formed a new umbrella organization, the American Savings Education Council, to bring public and private partners together for purposes of building an ongoing program that would bridge any gaps between changes in political administrations.

The initial public relations plan developed for the US Department of Labor included a proposal for radio and television PSAs but funding was not available. Fidelity Investments, which had produced and distributed a video news release from the US Department of Labor to help launch the campaign, agreed to provide underwriting for development of PSAs. The initial plan was to air the spots in the Washington, DC metro area as part of a funded partnership of EBRI/ASEC/WJLA-ABC-7/ and two Bonneville radio stations, WTOP, an all-news station and WGMS, a good music station. A plan was then developed to launch a national campaign using the same creative that was developed for the Washington market.

Subsequently the National Association of Broadcasters provided national distribution of the television PSAs via its closed circuit system, which is fed to all its members, and AP Radio provided national distribution of the radio spots to stations directing viewers and listeners to the Choose to Save website at www.choosetosave.org.

The national distribution described in this case history developed as the Choose to Save education program entered the half way point of its third year, while the on-going program is now beginning its fifth year. During that initial two and one half years, a variety of high-quality television and radio PSAs had been developed that could be joined with those from the Savings Bonds and SSA programs for this combined national distribution effort.

In July 2000, the Employee Benefits Research Institute, the American Savings Education Council, and the National Partnership for Financial Empowerment retained Goodwill Communications to distribute a public service announcement (PSA) to broadcast and cable television outlets. The campaign theme developed as part of a multi-year program by EBRI and ASEC, "Choose to Save®," encouraged the public to increase their savings, provided information on the importance of retirement planning, and directed respondents to both a toll-free telephone number and the program website where they could get more information. The "Choose to Save®" website at www.choosetosave.org also features a retirement savings needs estimator called the "Ballpark Estimate Worksheet®" and over 125 other financial calculators.

The following facts illustrate how important it is for consumers to plan for their future:

• Only 49% of workers have any idea how much they need to save for retirement.
• The average Social Security benefit for the year 2000 is only $804 per month.
• Medical advances could keep you alive until age 100.
• 69% of savers say they could save an additional $20 per week.

The "Choose to Save®" campaign was unique in at least two ways:

• Some of the television spots that were in the package distributed to TV stations as PSAs aired as part of a multi-part funded partnership with ABC-7 in the Washington market, thus their exposure in a very important market where opinion leaders and legislators are located was guaranteed.
• The package included PSAs from three different organizations - those produced by "Choose to Save®", spots produced by the U.S. Savings Bonds, and PSAs produced by the Social Security Administration, all of which had similar communications objectives.

A total of ten different PSAs - eight from "Choose to Save®", two from the Social Security Administration and one from Savings Bonds - in a variety of different spot lengths, gave public service directors a wide variety of options in terms of spot length and subject matter.

Promotional/Packaging Tactics

In light of the tight competitive environment for PSAs - especially for television - the campaign incorporated several promotional strategies to insure that the "Choose to Save®" PSAs received maximum public exposure and a receptive audience among public service directors. These techniques included:

• Describing the CTS PSAs in Goodwill Communications's Broadcasters Café and CABLEPAK News newsletters inserted into PSA packages sent to 1,200 broadcast stations and 600 cable outlets. The CTS PSA was the featured campaign in the broadcast newsletter with a front-page story and the newsletter was distributed to all attendees at the annual conference of the National Broadcast Association for Community Affairs.

Using colorful and graphically enticing TV PSA packaging as a way to cut through the PSA clutter at stations and get public service directors to notice the CTS PSAs. This included a six panel, four-color storyboard, a 4-color dub box label and individual labels for each dub format.

• Encouraging EBRI to become a member of the National Broadcast Association for Community Affairs (NBACA), the only association in the country comprised of television public service directors. An EBRI staff member also attended the NBACA conference in Boston.

• Sending stations PSAs addressed to personal contact names for all U.S. broadcast outlets and sending them the preferred videotape format for their station. A second matching label was also applied to the business reply card that was inserted into every TV PSA package to make it easier for them to respond.

In addition to these promotional tactics, the campaign helped to cultivate a strong tie-in between the EBRI/ASEC and their long-standing partner, the Social Security Administration, since all three organizations are essentially working to accomplish the same goals - increasing the financial security of the American public. Since SSA was introducing its latest PSA at about the same time as the national tape distribution "Choose to Save®" PSA campaign, both organizations realized synergies between the two campaigns via several techniques:

• Arranging for the CTS logo to be incorporated into the ending tag for the new SSA TV PSA entitled "Quiz Show," which was premiered in Washington, DC and attended by many SSA and EBRI/ASEC/NPFE representatives.
• Including the CTS logo on the "Quiz Show" PSA, which was shown in movie theaters in the Washington/Baltimore markets as a test.
• Developing an "e-mail PSA" which will be sent to some 1,500 corporations, institutions, foundations, government agencies and non-profit organizations. The e-mail PSA is essentially the same PSA as the "Quiz Show," except it uses "flash" technology so it can be sent as an e-mail attachment via the Internet. However, the front end and ending tag of the PSA have been modified to include EBRI/ASEC logos and websites.
• Producing a banner ad jointly sponsored by SSA/EBRI/ASEC, which will be promoted to various websites, particularly those that reach consumers interested in financial education subjects.
• Producing a joint SSA/EBRI/ASEC website to promote a national savings education month at http://www.psaresearch.com/cafegallery.html which is part of the Broadcasters Café website that Goodwill Communications maintains at www.psaresearch.com. Its purpose is to educate the media on the goals of the savings education campaign and a National Savings Education Month to be established in 2002.
• Creating a tool kit that was mailed to ten SSA Regional Communications Directors, as well as 125 SSA Public Affairs Specialists around the country. The purpose of the kit was to provide samples of all media materials distributed in their locale, inform them about the aforementioned website, and how to access media reports posted to a special website for SSA outreach staff at http://www.psaresearch.com/ssareports.asp.

Distribution Strategies

Many people who are not familiar with public service advertising think that to get PSAs aired, all you have to do is apply a set of TV station labels to a package and send it to stations. However, due to the intense competition for earned media these days, it is much more complicated than that. To reduce costs, it is also very important to understand that not all U.S. TV stations use PSAs, so the distributor must know precisely which stations provide an opportunity for getting exposure. A number of factors must be taken into consideration including:

• Market penetration - our plan needed to address all the primary and secondary TV markets in the U.S.
• Using a targeting technique to reach those media outlets that are the heaviest users of PSA materials and those, which use PSAs on subjects pertaining to financial security.
• Using low-cost techniques to get PSAs aired on cable television and radio as a way to reinforce broadcast TV exposure, and reach both primary and secondary target audiences.
• Addressing special considerations for serving the "big four" broadcast networks, national and regional cable networks and special distribution opportunities such as those provided by the National Association of Broadcasters.

Distribution Plan

The TV PSA distribution plan covered all 212 top TV markets, as well as those stations most likely to use PSAs on savings education.

Using proprietary data in our Public Service Advertising Analysis System, the PSA distribution focused on those stations that are the heaviest users of PSA materials according to a unique PSA "user frequency index" we maintain on every outlet in the system.

Additionally, the distribution plan targeted those stations, which have used PSAs on financial topics, including campaigns from Savings Bonds, the IRS and SSA.

The PSA plan used five different distribution channels to reach the nation's broadcast and cable television outlets:

• Direct Delivery - mailing PSAs to the top 1,100 broadcast television stations in the country that regularly use PSAs, in the station's preferred tape format.
• Network Delivery to the four broadcast networks - ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox - as well as direct delivery to 35 national cable networks that accept PSAs.
• NAB Closed Circuit - arranging for the National Association of Broadcasters to transmit the CTS PSA to its member stations via its closed circuit system.
• "Super Station" Transmission - distributing the CTS PSA to WTBS, WOR and WGN, all of which reach national audiences via satellite feeds.
• Distributing the CTS PSA to 600 leading cable systems, each of which has more than 15,000 subscribers, as part of our shared-reel distribution service called CABLEPAK®.

Finally, "Choose to Save®" radio PSAs were distributed to 5,000 radio stations that regularly use PSAs as part of a shared-disk distribution program called Radio DiskPak®. By participating in the shared-CD approach, we were able to reduce costs by two-thirds.

Evaluation

TV PSAs were uniquely coded so that each execution and each client's PSAs could be tracked independently using the A.C Nielsen SIGMA electronic monitoring system. As shown below, the campaign generated $2.3 million in SIGMA TV value alone, with bounce-back card data (projected usage) and cable usage adding another $2.4 million in value, for a campaign total of $4.8 million.

The "Choose to Save®" TV PSAs were also shown on the Nashville Network with 69 million viewers, as well as the Armed Forces TV Network, with one million viewers reaching both U.S. service personnel and their families worldwide.

Key Usage Trends

Usage by client:

The CTS PSA values contributed to 46 percent of the total airtime, with those produced by the Social Security Administration and U.S. Savings Bonds evenly splitting the balance. Of the 14,945 total airplays, just under half were those for the "CTS" campaign.

Usage by length:

Half of all exposure was generated by the 60-second PSA, even though there were only two 60-second PSAs in the package of ten spots.

Shelf Life:

This graph documents how important it is to extend tracking to the maximum practical limit. At the 32-week period of tracking, already the CTS TV PSA generated over 40% more exposure than was reported at the normal 26-week cutoff for tracking.

Top market usage:

Nearly two-thirds of all broadcast usage occurred in the top 100 markets, which is where 86% of all U.S. TV households are located.

Regional usage:

Traditionally many PSA campaigns do not fare well in the western regions of the country, somewhat due to unique requirements of the largest media market in the west - southern California. However, for the CTS campaign, it is the Northwestern region where PSA exposure was far below the norm. This data is useful in planning follow-up strategies.

Finally, for radio - which was still in the evaluation process when this case history was prepared - the "Choose to Save®" national distribution tape PSAs aired 25,114 times on 237 stations in 170 markets. Of the nine campaigns shown here, the CTS campaign generated the second highest exposure of all DiskPak participants - $367,654 in airtime value.

As this case history was being written, a new campaign was distributed to 1,100 broadcast outlets comprised of four new "Choose to Save®" PSAs in various lengths and aimed at different audiences.

Additionally, a half-hour program called "The Savings Game" was distributed to 110 cable TV stations, which ordered the program. To date, this wave of the campaign has generated over a half million in advertising value as of the first report.

For more information about the "Choose to Save®" education program visit the following websites:

Note: The last website was designed especially for the media.

American Savings Education Council
2121 K St., NW Suite 600
Washington, DC 20037-1896
Danny Devine: (202) 775-6308
Fax: (202) 775-6312
E-mail: devine@ebri.org