What is Non-commercial Advertising?

 

"The mass producing and consuming of images has transformed the way you and I see and understand the world… media images are the basis of our daily decisions..." - Bill Moyers in "The Public Mind", 1989

 
Advertising is a powerful (and value-neutral) communications tool: the same techniques used to promote commercial goods and services can be used to inform, educate and motivate the public about non-commercial public interest issues, such as energy conservation or family planning. Presently, advertising is not being used widely for non-commercial, public interest purposes. Whatever the reason, advertising's potential as an educational tool is grossly under-utilized.

Public service advertising, non-commercial advertising, public education campaigns, public interest advertising, issue advertising and social marketing are different terms for the use of sophisticated marketing communications techniques (generally associated with commercial enterprise) on behalf of non-commercial, public interest initiatives.

In our "media-centric" world, the mass media can be likened to a city's main street. Advertising campaigns create "storefronts on media Main Street." Each advertising message provides the public with an entry point through which information can be found on an issue, its relevance to their lives and what tangible actions can be taken. Without a storefront on "media main street," nonprofits (and the issues they espouse) risk being overlooked by the great majority of citizens.

The major obstacle to the use of advertising techniques for non-commercial purposes is the cost of access, it is expensive to disseminate messages by conventional means.
 

The American Public Service Advertising System

A viable system for the production, dissemination and management of non-commercial media campaigns has operated in the United States since 1942. The best known proponents of the system are the Advertising Council (Ad Council) and the Partnership for a Drug-Free America (PDFA), both nonprofit organizations. Essentially this system operates as a cooperative public service venture of nonprofit organizations and private advertising and media companies. The key management and intermediary role is provided by the Ad Council or PDFA. For example, to produce a campaign on an issue, such as recycling, the Ad Council forms a "partnership" with a nonprofit organization, an advertising agency and the media industry. The nonprofit provides the program initiative that is to be advertised, while the participating advertising agency and media companies provide creative, media planning and dissemination services on a pro bono basis.

During the 1970's, an Ad Council anti-littering campaign featured a Native-American, who silently implored viewers not to litter - with a tear. Millions of people were moved by this poignant, memorable image. It is an excellent example of non-commercial advertising's power and potential to reach and engage a large audience. Compelling new images are needed to promote sustainable lifestyles and action worldwide.

While the public service advertising system functions reasonably well in the industrialized nations, it is not used extensively in other parts of the world. To promote sustainable activities to a large global audience, the public service advertising system must be recognized, strengthened and extended if its full potential as a global communications and educational tool is to be realized.
 

The Advertising Advantage

 

"Dissemination does not equal publication, and publication does not equal absorption and action. (All who receive it won't publish it, and all who read or hear won't understand or act upon it.)" - Walter Seifert, Prof. Emeritus of Public Relations, Ohio State Univ.

 

Ultimately, the test of a communications program or strategy is whether or not it achieves the desired goal. Based on results, the sustainable development community's reliance on free print media coverage as its primary communications channel is failing.

Modern advertising and marketing techniques offer some significant advantages over journalism as a means of "connecting" with the desired audience. Although journalism is and will continue to be an important communications tool in raising public awareness of sustainable development, the journalistic principle of editorial impartiality proscribes many news organizations from advocating a specific action. This tends to dilute journalism's ability to improve public understanding of tangible actions that can be taken.

Advertising's juxtaposition of powerful visual images and compelling copy achieves an immediate emotional connection with viewers that print media can rarely match. In many ways, advertising is better suited to the realities and lifestyles of today's busy individual. The use of advertising media offers: 

Control of Message. The producer of a message controls the content and action request.

Control of Action Request. A specific action can be advocated and stated in clear unambiguous language. This attribute is fundamental to the message's effectiveness and retention.

Efficacy in the Popular Media. Advertising is effective because it offers a clear, concise message that can be conveyed in a few seconds. This clarity of message is well suited to the most powerful and popular media: broadcast television and radio.

Repetition of Message. Advertising messages can be repeated over time. In most instances, one exposure is not sufficient to make an impression on a viewer; repeating a message is critical to the behavior change process as the number and regularity of exposures increase the likelihood that an individual will take the recommended action when an opportunity arises.

Message Testing. The clarity and effectiveness of the message's content and action request can be tested and modified prior to release; this helps to maximize the chance that a viewer will act on the suggestion.

Flexibility. Advertising is flexible and can be disseminated by a wide variety of media, which helps to maximize message exposures.

 

Non-commercial Advertising is Cost-effective

The public service advertising system is extremely cost-effective. To illustrate the potential of public service advertising campaigns at the international level, the Ad Council manages 25 to 30 national campaigns on an annual budget of four million dollars. The value of the time and space donated by the media is estimated at more than a billion dollars annually - a cost-benefit ratio of 250 to 1. Even greater ratios can be anticipated in less developed regions, given the lower costs.
 
 

Examples of Non-commercial Advertising Campaigns

Recent example of effective media campaigns include:

Healthy Lifestyles. In the early Eighties, Stanford University conducted a five-year public communications campaign to improve the health of people living in Monterey and Salinas, California on the premise that information can influence the cognitive attitudes that govern behavior. By utilizing a sophisticated media campaign, generally associated with commercial advertising, health promotion messages were delivered through newspapers, radio, television, pamphlets, classes, contests, on-the-job education, point-of-purchase posters, grocery bag inserts, tips for children, and a weekly medical column. Researchers estimate that every adult had at least two exposures a week.

After five years, surveys showed that citizens of these two cities had a 13 percent drop in smoking and changes in blood pressure and cholesterol were better than those found in two control cities not exposed to the media campaign. County officials estimate savings of $38 million in medical costs, while the campaign cost $340,000 a year: a cost-benefit ratio of better than 100 to 1.

• Population. In Thailand in 1974, Mechai Viravaidya, founded the Population and Community Development Association, a private not-for-profit organization, to foster family planning, distribute birth control devices, and curb its birthrate. As of 1989, in just fifteen years, Thailand's population growth was cut in half, from 3.2 to 1.6 percent. Employing local media, humor and showmanship, Mechai has made population control a national mission. Seventy percent of Thai couples practice family planning. Without the program, it is estimated that Thailand's population of 54 million, in 1989, would have been 64 million.

 
• Recycling in the U.S. Prior to the late 80s, the American public resisted efforts to re-introduce recycling, which had been widely practiced during World War II. People were accustomed to throwing away used newspapers, bottles and cans without consideration of the economic or social consequences. For an affluent, consumption driven society, the convenience of disposability was paramount. The public attitude toward recycling illustrates two key points about behavior change and non-commercial advertising. First, people are good at reacting to events but not at anticipating them. Second, any messages or suggested action needs to be compatible with group values and beliefs. Recycling was not really accepted until the public was made aware that: natural resources are finite; collection of litter was costing taxpayers billions of dollars; landfill space is limited, expensive and potentially hazardous. Recycling became more relevant as media covered the issue, the public came to recognize that it was in their economic and environmental self-interest.

The Manhattan-based Environmental Defense (ED) has promoted recycling in the U.S. since 1988 in partnership with the Ad Council. The nationwide public service advertising campaign's slogan, "If You're Not Recycling, You're Throwing It All Away," is juxtaposed with an image of the Earth floating in the dark void of space to create a compelling message.

To illustrate the potential impact of well-conceived, long-term non-commercial advertising, consider the recycling campaign's results: according to EDF since the campaign was inaugurated, it has received over $150 million worth of donated media time/space. And it has helped: raise the overall national rate of recycling from 10 to 21%; expand curbside recycling programs, from 600 to over 7,000; and generate over 305,000 requests for information on recycling (more than 700 a week). A 1990 Roper poll found that recycling was the most widespread of activities that individuals are doing to improve the environment in the U.S. - and was growing the most rapidly.

• "Un-marketing" Drugs. While the U.S. government has pumped billions of dollars into the interdiction of drugs with disappointing results, the Partnership for a Drug Free America (PDFA) has employed sophisticated marketing techniques designed to "un-market" drugs among all age and demographic groups. Surveys demonstrate that its advertising campaigns have helped achieve a shift in the public's attitude toward drug use among all age and demographic groups. This is significant because an individual's attitude has been shown to govern behavior.

The knowledge of these attitudinal shifts and the correlation with the advertising was established in two scientific studies of over 7,000 preteens, teenagers, college students, adults who responded to questionnaires (the benchmark study, conducted in February 1987, was followed in March 1988). These studies demonstrate that advertising can change attitudes and motivate behavior, and also that it is more effective when frequency of exposure approaches strategic marketing levels (four or more exposures a week).
 

• Un-marketing smoking. In 1993 and 1994, the State of California launched a 150 million dollar anti-smoking campaign, the most extensive non-commercial advertising campaign ever mounted; it helped to boost the rate at which its smokers quit to three times the national average. However, according to the Federal Trade Commission, the tobacco industry spent 6 billion on national advertising and promotions in 1993 alone - more than 40 times the California state's media spending.
 

Social Marketing

Social marketing is a term for the promotion of non-commercial, public interest initiatives to combat serious social issues through the use of sophisticated marketing techniques commonly associated with commercial advertising. Social marketing programs are a marriage of community and commercial interests: a partnership of nonprofit organizations, funding agencies and private enterprise. These partnerships have emerged as awareness that individuals and organizations have a stake in the well being of their communities and the global environment.

Social marketing is a blend of philanthropy and capitalism that has evolved from hard won experience in the developing world that it is often more effective to sell something than to give it away. The basis of all the strategies is the recognition that education and action (awareness and use) are inter-linked.

In developing countries, where HIV infection is spreading fastest, ignorance, scarcity and price conspire against the condom; only 2% of married African couples use them. In most developing countries, people are unwilling or unable to pay more than the price of a cigarette for a condom. Aid agencies can simply give them away, but then they are unlikely to be distributed widely because few middlemen are interested in a product that costs nothing.

Public health officials noticed that no matter how primitive the country's infrastructure or remote the region, down the road from the clinic there was always a villager distributing cigarettes, soda and beer. It occurred to these officials to subsidize condom distribution on the premise that:
 

• Employing market incentives would propel the growth of condom use;
• The commercial distribution system is more efficient than the government's.
The concept of social marketing may be the most effective approach for many of the developing world's health problems. Poor countries cannot afford to give away enough condoms to have an impact on the spread of AIDS. Social marketing recovers some of the costs, and it shifts health care away from the public sector, which tends to be the least efficient part of their economies.

For example, until "Prudence", the condom, was introduced in 1987, the total number of condoms sold or given away annually in Zaire (a country of 30 million) was about 500,000. In 1989, 4 million condoms were sold; sales in 1990 exceeded 9 million.

Social marketing programs for condoms and other products, such as oral re-hydration formula for children, are being developed in dozens of countries.
 

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