An executive from a major package goods company called our office recently. It seems he came across one of our evaluation reports that had been prepared for a non-profit, and his company was going to assist with a future PSA campaign.

"With VNRs, infomercials and expanded news programs, do TV stations even use PSAs any more?" he asked. I went on to explain that stations do indeed run PSAs - hundreds if not thousands of them in a given year, and shared a few of our client successes with him.

However, his inquiry made me think about the role of PSAs in a new light. We who distribute PSAs have a storehouse of intelligence data about which stations use PSAs and the estimated value of that airtime. Unfortunately, many of the stations that provide the airtime to various non-profit causes, don't maintain logs or provide affidavits for this exposure. When it comes time for the community affairs department to demonstrate its contribution to their station's bottom line, they are not able to tell the whole story.

And, this is not a problem among just individual stations. A year or so ago a colleague was discussing evaluation with one of the big three networks. The network executive indicated he did not have any idea of the level of support his network provided to non-profits, but did say that having this information would be very useful in demonstrating the contributions of his department. It came as a great shock to learn that a major network would not know how much support they had provided for various public interest campaigns, and if the networks don't know, we can probably assume that most stations don't know either.

With this premise, it may be useful to explore several topics that could help both station and non-profits increase their stature among their respective centers of influence:

• Is public service advertising effective?
  
• How does a station's PSA policy and track record relate to its community image?
  
• What can non-profits and distributors do to reinforce a station's community affairs efforts?

Obviously in a newsletter article, we can't explore these topics in depth, but they are among the subjects that will be addressed in various workshops and discussions at the NBACA conference in Houston. However, we can cover the basics.

PSA Effectiveness

The literature is replete with case histories of PSA effectiveness. Whether we are looking at the subject from the macro or micro level, there is ample evidence that PSAs help increase public awareness and stimulate response.

Perhaps one of the most memorable PSA campaigns that comes to mind is the Partnership for a Drug Free America's "fried egg" TV spot. Others that have proven to be immensely popular are the Ad Council's "Vince & Larry" spots for safety belts and the "Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Drunk" series of PSAs for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which have helped save thousands of lives by changing public behavior behind the wheel.

A long-term campaign launched by one of our clients, the National Easter Seal Society, also demonstrate how an aggressive PSA campaign can pay dividends. In the mid-80's Easter Seals conducted a Gallup poll measuring public awareness of leading non-profits and their individual missions. While 90% of the public recognized Easter Seals, only a third could identity what they did and how they served their constituents. After a five year series of PSAs distributed to all types of media outlets, another poll was conducted by Louis Harris which showed:

• 70% of the general public and nearly 90% of civic leaders reported increased awareness of Easter Seals
  
• The number of people who knew specifically what Easter Seals did, grew from 33 to 59%
  
• Nearly two-thirds of households with disabled persons could state in their own words the basic mission of Easter Seals

Community Affairs & Station Image

Given the intense competition for local viewers, anything a station can do to increase its local visibility, and strengthen its community franchise will undoubtedly result in larger audiences, and more loyal viewers. This, in turn, will ultimately increase station advertising revenue which is based on audience size. While all of us in the community affairs profession believe in altruism, I'm told that general managers sleep better at night when they know they are showing increased audiences and revenues. And, since at most stations the general manager controls the community affairs department, I think the connection between these different points is obvious.

This leads to the final point how can non-profits (and their distributors) help community affairs directors prove their worth. Since, in our experience, most stations do not use affidavits or other reports to document PSA usage, one of our goals on the non-profit side should be to share what we know about PSA campaign performance with the stations providing the support.

For our clients, we conduct a two-tiered evaluation report for each campaign that we distribute, using both bounce-back cards that stations complete and return to us (active evaluation) and the A.C Nielsen SIGMA system (passive monitoring). While stations are very familiar with the first technique, many public service directors are not even aware of the newer SIGMA system, since they do not play a part in the evaluation process.

Based on an invisible code that is placed on the TV PSA dub sent to stations, Nielsen is able to provide exact second detailed usage for any given PSA that is monitored by SIGMA. We cumulate the data and provide it to our clients so they can use it in selling the value of their PSA program. Our belief is that sharing this data with stations could be equally useful when the community affairs director sits down with management to discuss next year's community affairs budget.

However, numbers on a page are not the only way to demonstrate the power of PSAs. Many non-profits use toll-free numbers in their spots, urging the public to contact them for more information. A campaign launched by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Service's Office on Smoking & Health demonstrates how PSAs affected phone inquiries. Using Broadcast Data Systems passive monitoring technology, they monitored PSA activity in the top 100 markets and the phone calls they received as compared to markets where there were no PSAs, but other kinds of promotional activity. A total of 72,000 phone inquires resulted from the markets where PSAs occurred, nearly five times the number of calls compared to the non-PSA markets. Here again, sharing this kind of data with the stations that provided the support seems obvious, but in reality, it is rarely done, and thus community affairs people lack a very useful tool to demonstrate their station's commitment to important causes.

This leads us to what we in the non-profit world can do to help our station partners in their quest for more respect, and increased resources. As a start, we intend to conduct an analysis of every client campaign that we distribute, and prepare consolidated reports showing the PSA support provided by every commercial TV station in the country for each client. We will then provide this information to our clients urging them to write letters of appreciation and attach the report with the letter so stations can see the amount of airplay they have donated to each cause. We are also working on a report that correlates telephone inquiries to SIGMA data, so we can share that intelligence with clients and stations as well.

Soon A.C. Nielsen will for the first time be able to demonstrate the amount of network support provided to organizations using the SIGMA tracking system. When that system is perfected, non-profits will be able to share this data with the networks, which in turn should help them in selling the importance of their contribution to various social causes.

The bottom line of these different exercises is that the broadcast community affairs professionals and non-profit organizations truly are in a partnership situation. We have, what biologists refer to as a "symbiotic relationship;" we need each other to do what we must do in our respective spheres of influence. Hopefully, we can help each other to reach new heights of public awareness and solve some of the pressing social problems confronting our nation at the same time.