Public Service Announcements - Effective or just good to watch?

A PSA generally is a message to inform the public on issues that are considered to be in the general best interests of the community at large. These are aimed at altering public attitudes by raising consciousness about particular issues and are usually created with collaboration between private and public entities. These may be created to reflect a social message or humanitarian notion.

An interesting PSA or Public service announcement/advertisement/campaign as many call it, got my attention last week. This campaign in particular tries to address the much talked about issue in the current times, women safety. The recent unfortunate events shook the confidence of citizen in a number of agencies. Law enforcement agency has always been at the receiving end for being perceived to be callous and even inefficient at times. In order to make an attempt to restore the confidence of people into its functioning and to assure them of their help and support, Mumbai police, along with Ogilvy Mumbai came up with a PSA.

The campaign used real police men and women to convey a sincere message to its audience which translates to – “we will teach Mumbai how to respect its women.”It is a five-film campaign, each film focus on one issue related to harassment and abuse of women. All the ad-films encourage women to report any incident, big or small to police without the fear of being harassed at police stations. The campaign has been conceived and executed by Ogilvy Mumbai with the help of Mumbai police.

You can watch a couple of films from the campaign here.

Mumbai Police and Ogilvy Mumbai 1

Mumbai Police and Ogilvy Mumbai 2

The trend for public service advertisements and campaign is not new in India. Some of the most famous PSA campaigns India has ever seen are Pulse Polio mission, HIV AIDS Awareness campaigns and Balbir Pasha. These were created to raise awareness for social and health issues like AIDS and Polio.

Balbir Pasha Teaser Ad

Balbir Pasha Ad-Film 1

A recent trend that has emerged in this front is surge of businesses trying to link their brand or brand image to a social cause and hence putting their eggs in PSA basket not just as a measure of business communication but to reiterate their support to address certain social or humanitarian causes.

Tata Tea’s “Jago re” campaign, Times of India’s Teach India campaign” and Aircel’s “Save our Tiger” campaign are such examples which have tried to address issues related to governance, corruption, education and declining tiger population in the country.

However, the biggest question which everyone is asking is – How effective are these campaigns?

The answer isn’t as simple as it may appear.

On the face of it, the PSAs are definitely catchy due to their creative prowess. However, the problem lies in the fact that these ads are usually made to win awards for agencies (the ones which are on social issues without a business house backing) and unfortunately that’s the only logical consummation their creators are looking for with these creative ads. Very rarely we would see a ground work and follow-up activities being done to make these campaigns effective and be sincere to the cause. Quite the same applies to the PSAs created for businesses, as seldom are business houses serious about the efficacy and change that these campaigns can bring about. All these ads are supposed to do is to grab eye-balls and create a recall with the associated brand.  

CSR is another major reason why we find many businesses jumping on the PSA band-wagon. Corporates are required to show a small percentage of their income being spent on good for society and this seems to be an interesting avenue to show the concern and seriousness of the organization for a particular cause, achieve a certain degree of brand recall and respect in the eyes of audience and also manage the regulations and policy requirements.

How these ads can be more effective in achieving ground results, it is yet to be seen but unless there is a change in how ad agencies, government, NGOs and business houses look at PSAs as the vehicle of social messages, PSAs may continue to be marred by “what a beautiful ad!” syndrome without actually doing what it must do.

Cheers,