Below is the information needed to write your Public Service Announcement. Remember this is 1:30 seconds. Plan accordingly. The final copy of the PSA itself is due Tuesday in class to me - printed out. This will allow the other member(s) in your group time to proof read.
THE COMPLETED FINAL PROJECTS ARE DUE MONDAY 14 FEBRUARY. Check over the last two blogs if you have forgotton the components of this project.
What Is A Public Service Announcement?
A Public Service Announcement (PSA) is a free “commercial” for a non-profit organization. It is aired voluntary by individual radio and/or TV stations.
How to make a public service announcement.
First ask yourself, do you want to: A) Create a message that no one hears? or B) Create a message that someone does hear?
How Do I Start?
You start with the goal of the PSA: What do you want it to accomplish? Once you know the goal, then you can figure out how the PSA can achieve it.
What Is The Goal of a PSA?The goal of a PSA is simple: To get someone to take a specific action. It’s not to talk about the sponsoring organization. It’s to motivate the targeted audience to act: To drop off the canned goods for the food drive. To make sure their children’s seat belts are buckled. To stay in school....To stop smoking....To avoid abusing drugs.
Is It Important Enough?
Your first question must be, “Is this message important enough to broadcast?”
Your second question must be, “Is this message relevant to the broadcast audience?”
You might have a local Stamp Collecting Society, legally organized as a non-profit organization. Technically, that Stamp Collecting Society meets the requirements of a PSA sponsor.
Perhaps the Stamp Collecting Society wants a local station to broadcast a PSA that tells people the time and location of the society’s next regularly scheduled meeting.
Should the station air such a PSA?
Probably not. Because:
•The message is relevant to very few members of the audience.
•The Stamp Collecting Society can contact every member (via mail, fax, telephone, its website and/or e-mail) without utilizing the public airwaves.
The More Vital, The Less Universal It Needs To Be.
But “what percentage of the audience will be affected” is not the only aspect to consider.
Maybe there’s a deadly disease that afflicts 5% of children between the ages of 5 and 10. For 95% of the children in your audience (or, more appropriately, 95% of the children of the parents in your audience), a PSA describing the 10 Warning Signs of this disease is irrelevant.
But for the remaining 5%, that PSA might be the difference between life and death.
So the two key criteria for a station’s broadcast of a PSA should be:
•How relevant it is to the mass audience.
•How important it is to the target audience.
Talk Only About The Results.Most people who write PSAs do so from the point-of-view of the sponsoring organization:
“The Smallville Homeless Shelter is holding its annual food drive from Monday, November 1 until Friday, November 26. If you would like to participate, please bring your canned goods to one of several drop-off points which are located at....”
Whom is that PSA about? The Smallville Homeless Shelter.
What is about? Their annual food drive. But notice how easy it is to talk about the results of the food drive: “A can of food probably doesn’t mean that much to you. You probably have a cupboard full of them. But just a few of those cans will keep a Smallville family from going hungry tonight....”
Use Real Language.
Ever notice how some commercials speak in a language that you only seem to hear in commercials? “Our quality merchandise and competitive prices....Our friendly, knowledgeable staff....Our wide selection from which to choose....”
Don’t speak that language in your PSA! But if you don’t use the kind of artificial language you hear in some commercials, what language can you use? The language you use every day. Instead of, “To obtain participation details,” you say, “To find out how to participate.” Or, even better, “To find out how you can help feed a hungry family.”
Use Emotion.
People act based on emotional reasons. They might “rationalize” their actions with logic. But they’re motivated by emotions. Can you think of a movie that you really, really wanted to see? If so, undoubtedly your desire was emotional: You heard it was funny or scary or suspenseful. You didn’t “analyze” all of your movie options, draw up a
list of pro’s and con’s for each, and then acting solely on logic select the one film that seemed to be the most “rational” choice. Facts don’t sell. (Note: By “sell,” we mean “motivate a person to act.”) Emotions sell. Let’s add some emotion to the PSA we’ve already started: “Tonight, many of Smallville’s children will go to bed hungry. Unless you help.”
Make It Personally Relatable.
A PSA is nothing more than a conversation with the audience.
Make your message personal to them; make it easy for them to relate to:
“Have you ever been hungry? Not because you’re on a diet or you didn’t have time to eat breakfast, but because you don’t have enough money to buy food? Can you imagine what it’s like for a child to go to bed hungry every night? Unfortunately, that’s not an imaginary situation for 13,000 children in Smallville. At the Smallville Homeless XYZ Store, all this month. Please take a look at your shelves and see what you can afford to donate. There’s a child in our community who will go to bed hungry tonight...unless you help.” Shelter, we know you’d like to help. That’s why we’ve made it easy for you to drop off your canned goods at any XYZ Store, all this month. Please take a look at your shelves and see what you can afford to donate. There’s a child in our community who will go to bed hungry tonight...unless you help.”
Identify The Organization.
The sponsoring organization must be identified within the PSA.
If you reread the PSA we just wrote, you’ll how easy it is to smoothly blend in the organization’s name with the message.
Deliver Exactly One “Core Message”
The “core message” is the one thing you want the audience to hear, to
understand, and to remember. Many PSAs (and many commercials) make the mistake of trying to get the audience to do more than one thing.
A PSA can ask people to donate food. Or money. Or time. But it shouldn’t ask for all three. One message. And to deliver that message effectively, you must do so with...
Clarity
You know what your PSA is about, because you’re the one who created it. But the audience doesn’t have the advantage of your inside knowledge. The audience needs to be able to understand the message the first time it airs. So in addition to making sure you have just one Core Message, you also must make it very clear. It’s your job to communicate. It’s not the audience’s job to figure out what you really mean.
The following is a summary of the above.
1. Choose your topic. Pick a subject that is important to you, as well as one you can visualize. Keep your focus narrow and to the point. More than one idea confuses your audience, so have one main idea per PSA.
2. Time for some research - you need to know your stuff! Try to get the most current and up to date facts on your topic. Statistics and references can add to a PSA. You want to be convincing and accurate.
3. Consider your audience. Are you targeting parents, teens, teachers or some other social group? Consider your target audience's needs, preferences, as well as the things that might turn them off. They are the ones you want to rally to action. The action suggested by the PSA can be almost anything. It can be spelled out or implied in your PSA, just make sure that message is clear.
4. Grab your audience's attention. You might use visual effects, an emotional response, humor, or surprise to catch your target audience. Be careful, however, of using scare tactics. Attention getters are needed, but they must be carefully selected. For example, when filming a PSA about controlling anger, a glass-framed picture of a family can be shattered on camera. This was dramatic, but not melodramatic. Staging a scene between two angry people to convey the same idea is more difficult to do effectively.
5. Create a script and keep your script to a few simple statements. A 30-second PSA will typically require about 5 to 7 concise assertions. Highlight the major and minor points that you want to make. Be sure the information presented in the PSA is based on up-to-date, accurate research, findings and/or data.
6. Practice, Practice, Practice
Photo by Dan Budnick
