Public Service Promotion: More Than Just Another PSA
by Karen Lee Rice, former President, National Broadcasting Association for Community AffairsCompetition
It's what broadcasters thrive on. And it's a good thing we do, because every year it seems there's more of it.
We're all familiar with the "Diminished Revenues Blues." Anyone who's been in this business for longer than two weeks is acquainted with the fact that broadcasting--radio or television--just isn't like the "good old days". Even newcomers know that broadcast revenues quit increasing in double digits at least five years ago--longer in some markets.
So what's the burning issue? Where have we gone from the way things used to be?
Anyone active in promotion or public affairs can point to one viable answer to those questions: localism. We're carving out station identities, community involvement positions, new revenue sources from whence we're most familiar: the markets we serve.
We recognize that we have to do things differently. We have to look for new sources of revenue, work smarter and leaner, market our stations more creatively and aggressively.
The more we travel this road, the more often promotion and public affairs and sales converge. And news isn't an island anymore either. Total station projects--which tie the efforts of news, programming, public affairs, sales and promotion around a single theme or topic--don't serve just one master. If projects don't address two or more station objectives, they usually don't last very long. Or receive much airtime or other station resources.
With the way our business has gone--and many sometimes forget that broadcasting is a business--we simply can't afford the luxury of having public affairs and promotion people function on a mutually exclusive basis. We don't have the resources to produce unlimited PSAs that run in overnight and early morning hours or promotion campaigns that aren't clearly focused on key segments of the audience.
Is that bad? Not necessarily. But it is different. And it is a tremendous challenge to chart a course in these unnavigated waters.
Some of it is familiar; but we're approaching old principles in new ways, and bound to make a few missteps along the way.
When a marketplace gets overpopulated with players, messages, ideas, you have to get smarter; you have to become more efficient with what your message is and how you deliver it. And it is true today that all businesses, not just broadcasting, have to market themselves differently than they have in the past. You have to add value to what you deliver to your audience and to your clients.
If you are a promotion executive, your task is to sell your product, and your product is your station, its programming and its talent. If you are a public affairs manager, your goal is to sell the issues of importance in your community. If you're in sales, you're selling clients on the premise that your station has the best time, the best image, the best audiences.
Increasingly, those diverse objectives can be wrapped up within one single package. You can build success for the station by creating packages that enable sales to sell more than single spots; that enable promotion to position the station strongly within the community; that provide public affairs with an effective public service vehicle.
For several years, KOJN-TV in Portland has produced an advertiser-supported news/public service/station promotion vehicle called "Positively Oregon." The summer-long campaign highlights people, businesses and industries that have contributed to Oregon's economic restructuring. We focus on constructive, positive efforts and show others how to make a contribution to the community's general well-being.
"Positively Oregon" has attracted sponsors interested in enhancing their corporate image through association with a positive product. It has also been instrumental in strengthening the station's image as a committed community player. While we can't measure the degree to which it has helped, we do know from various sources that the program has contributed to a public feeling that the community, business and otherwise, has turned around and is headed in a more positive direction.
Other vehicles have combined new revenue opportunities with station imaging and public service. State Farm has joined with us and Mothers Against Drunk Driving for two years to heavily promote the idea that drinking and driving don't mix. GTE has been our partner in a campaign to create awareness among young people that drinking and driving is just as deadly at high school graduation parties and other summer functions. In fact, the community involvement market position is so important to us as a station that we have developed a signature line, "At the Heart of It," that can be applied to community service, news and talent promotion, station imaging and entertainment promotion.
For a radio or television to separate itself from the crowd of other media players (print media as well as electronic), it has to be invested in the local scene.
Are we sacrificing public service quantity and quality for marketing objectives and the bottom line? On the contrary, we're increasing exposure into time periods previously claimed by advertisers. Some promotional and advertising messages are actually public service announcements. Many stations and corporations have discovered the value of communicating to viewers and clients their commitment to, and involvement in, the communities they serve.
We've also learned that investing in the community provides one of the best returns on investment you can make in any business. If you improve the community, you improve its quality of life.
That, in turn, attracts other investments and the cycle of growth remains healthy. As Baby Boomers age from their twenties and thirties to thirty and fortysomething, as we shift our attention to family, nuclear or otherwise, as we discover again what our parents knew (that an investment in the community is an investment in the family), we're interested as well in companies who address those concerns.
In 1988, San Francisco's KRON-TV adopted the positioning line "That's What a Friend Is 4" for promotion and community service. Its theme music has been adapted to multiple uses, including news programming.
Public Affairs Director Javier Valencia said public service campaigns come under the "Friend' umbrellas as do many news proof-of-performance spots. He cited as an example a POP spot which aired following a major news special report on an environmental issue. Not only did the POP message reinforce the importance of the coverage and its relevance to the Bay Area, but it provided a resource for viewers interested in further information or involvement in the issue, neatly addressing within one :30 spot the station's promotion objectives as well as its commitment to community service.
Valencia said the number one goal of the campaign was to generate volunteers. But it also has been extremely successful in identifying the station with values of caring about and being invested in the community.
Mindy Welch of Miami affiliate WPLG-TV has coordinated several major projects that have strengthened the station's strong community image, addressed critical community issues, and attracted corporate sponsorship. They started with "A World of Difference," moving on to "For Kids' Sake" and then "A Time to Care". Welch said each was an effective means of accomplishing several goals "'with one stone".
In addition to these syndicated programs, Welch and two colleagues have developed a number of other promotion/community service/revenue projects. Their 1989 summer reading program encouraged and supported literacy. And in early 1990, they'll be sponsoring a youth hotline as a community service, a station image vehicle, and a revenue source.
The youth hotline will provide resources and advice to young people faced with a variety of issues ranging from family, school, and social problems to suicide and drugs. The service will be free to callers and will provide referral information as well as recorded messages on a variety of topics.
Channel 2 and their corporate partner will both have sponsor identification during each of the estimated 80,000 calls expected during the first year of service. On-air promotion will not only alert people to the service, but remind people of WPLG's commitment of resources to Miami's young people.
Welch firmly believes that sponsored community affairs/public service has an important role to play in the future of broadcasting. She sees it as a "new revenue source as well as a way to empower various community organizations," and believes it is a powerful way to promote her station.
"It is possible for public affairs departments to become profit centers for stations," said Welch, "and still maintain integrity. It's also possible to combine promotion with community service, and effectively address more than one objective."
Milta McLean-Dennis of WRKS-FM in New York agrees. She says that developing and maintaining a strong community presence has given her urban contemporary station "a definite competitive edge".
To date the station has not had sponsorship of public affairs components. But McLean-Dennis said the success of "Youth on the Move" vignettes and the station's "Open Line" issues program has been so overwhelming that the station's sales department is looking at sponsorship opportunities.
In Los Angeles, KNBC has completed its twelfth consecutive year of a five-county health fair with Chevron USA, the American Red Cross and the Hospital Council of Southern California. KNBC's Beatrice Lewis said the station devotes massive on-air promotion to the project, Chevron provides operational monies, the Red Cross supplies volunteers, and the Hospital Council organizes medical experts to deliver services.
Lewis said the project is important to KNBC because "it's a way to show our viewers we're involved not only in the LA market, but also in several other counties. Health is a critical concern to people, especially to the thousands of unemployed or underemployed in our area."
Is it enough to just do station image? Topicals? Personality spots? Empowering communities through support of economic development efforts, grassroots solutions, spotlights on local heroes, also empowers stations in the minds of viewers/listeners. Radio and television stations have discovered one of their strongest marketing and promotion tools is community involvement.
What separates the winners from the also-rans? Sure, an NBC prime time, Oprah, Wheel and Jeopardy are important components. But there's something else that's just as important: localism. It's knowing your community, your market, your people. And making certain your community knows you care. You're invested and actively involved in it.
It used to be that every department functioned as an island, a separate entity. But the business climate of the '80s and '90s requires people to pull together, pool their resources, strengthen one another's efforts.
Sales can't sell news effectively if news doesn't deliver numbers. News can't deliver numbers if it doesn't have support from engineering, production, promotion. And promotion can't sell news product effectively if news doesn't deliver what is promised.
The true bottom line is that we have to try things we wouldn't have dreamed of even three years ago. We have to take risks.
Yes, we'll make mistakes. We'll find the boundaries may be overstepped from time to time, but we'll also find out that boundaries move and that is what innovation is all about.
Steps to Success
- 1. Top management support
It is critical that the general manager communicate his/her commitment and expectations of a project's success.- 2. Designated project coordinator
Each participating department must buy into the project and be held accountable for its components. But there must be one individual charged with the responsibility to monitor the overall continuity, multiple deadlines, and various details that may fall between departmental boundaries.- 3. A plan
What are you going to do? When and how will it be done? What do you hope to accomplish? What are each department's objectives?- 4. Constant communication
Nothing dooms a project quicker than neglect. And the assumption that everyone perceives the project in the same way and will follow through as planned is folly. One of the tenants broadcasters share with jugglers is keeping a number of things up in the air at the same time. If you keep your eye on only one pin' you may very well drop another. Somebody's got to watch the entire act.- 5. Intradepartment cooperation
The cultivation of the notion that all departments are equal and necessary to the team's success is critical.- 6. Follow through
The full impact of a total station effort, whether it is a single campaign or a year-long marketing campaign addressed to viewers and clients alike, is dependent on clear, concise messages speaking to the target audience. Details that support and reinforce the main message. Consistency, consistency, consistency, in method and message.- 7. Flexibility
The same things won't work for every market or every situation, and you have to be prepared to drop back and punt.- 8. Risk
Mistakes are inevitable. But how else do you learn where a new solution might be?- 9. Ability to learn
The path to successful innovation is neither clear nor easy. Don't let a few wrong moves paralyze your ability to venture into new territory and resist overcorrecting by becoming overly cautious.- 10. Commitment to new ideas
You can't learn to do anything new, or an old thing in a new way, if you're certain you know "it can't be done" or "it won't work".Every market in the country is facing challenges of increasing complexity. By looking at new ways of doing business, seeking greater effectiveness, and efficiency in all areas of a station's operations, we can find alternate routes to being successful broadcasters.
This environment causes us all to change the way we work, to question and examine and learn. What a tremendous opportunity that is for personal and professional growth!
