1. Smokey and the Cell Video – the Personal Public Service Announcement

I got my first lesson about advertising in elementary school. I didn’t know the right answer to “Who would you most like to meet?” was JFK or Jesus or Martin Luther King or even Hank Aaron. I wanted to meet Captain Crunch (it was a tough call but I figured that Lucky Charms leprechaun could get annoying pretty quick and it seemed that Casper was trying way too hard to be friendly). After the phone call from my teacher, my Mom sat me down and explained the Cap’n wasn’t real.

“But he’s on TV.”

“They pay to put him on TV so they can sell more cereal,” she snapped at me. After the last three-cavity trip to the dentist, she had banished the Cap’n. Now it was cornflakes for me.

That explained a lot, but not everything. I started noticing that a bunch of TV was about buying and selling. Some time later during “Flipper,” one of the other people I wanted to meet made a puzzling appearance. Who was paying to put Smokey the Bear on TV? I mean, I could see how the Cap’n’s people could afford his TV appearances. After all, he was a man of rank. But Smokey was an orphan refugee from a forest fire. Who was bankrolling him?

It wasn’t until I was in college that I learned the answer. “Only you can prevent forest fires” was a PSA – Public Service Announcement. The Federal Communications Commission defines a PSA as “any announcement for which no charge is made and which promotes programs, activities, or services of governments or non-profit organizations.” Broadcasters use the airwaves that belong to all of us to make money, so they have to give us, the public, something in return. Our payback is advertising prosocial advertising.

“A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
“Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.”
“This is your brain on drugs.”
They were all give-backs to offset the profits broadcasters made advertising cars, laundry detergent, and, oh yeah, sugary cereal.

Broadcasters liked (or at least tolerated) PSAs. It was a way to support important causes while getting us to do the thing they most needed us to do – watch TV. There was a mutually rewarding symmetry: broadcasters profited from TV, broadcasters would help with TV.

PSA campaigns have been a mainstay in public health efforts. When broadcasters were required to air one anti-smoking ad for every three cigarette ads, the smoking rate decreased so markedly that the cigarette industry decided to stop advertising on TV altogether – and a few years later Congress made cigarette ads illegal. And PSAs are the way that broadcasters first mobilized to fight the biggest health crisis of our age, AIDS.

But TV doesn’t have us by the eyeballs anymore. It was the first and only screen we had and we had to watch commercials to get to “I Dream of Jeannie”, or “Bewitched” or “Dallas.” Now we TIVO and HBO and watch online so no commercials. Broadcasters aren’t as fat and happy and profitable as they used to be. Networks are stingy with their ad space preferring to push their own products instead of public good. Today the most advertised product on TV is TV. TV isn’t our only screen – and the screen we carry in our pockets, palms, packs, and purses is the one we use the most.

Now it’s time for a new type of PSA. One that takes advantage of the most important communication device in our lives – our cellphone. This new PSA will allow cell phone companies the same opportunity afforded TV: they can give-back and while building market. Since these PSAs are pushed to our most personal device, let’s call them Personal Public Service Announcments -- PPSAs.

Cell phone companies (like Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc.) should give away the PPSA messages just like broadcasters have given away advertising time. It shouldn’t cost the user to download the public service video or to push the video to someone else. Because we know exactly who is receiving the message, we can target these messages in ways that broadcasters can only dream of. Think of the power of these new PPSAs to change people, to make lives better, to make communities stronger.

But will cell phone companies go along with giving away what they have been charging for? I think there is a good argument for the PPSA approach. Today, cell phone companies are getting hit with tons of taxes to pay for a range of services totally unrelated to their core businesses. In fact, the taxes on cellphones rank up there with the “sin” taxes of products like alcohol and cigarettes. By giving away bandwidth for prosocial advertising, I think legislatures can be convinced to lighten the load on cellular providers. Plus by making it free, people will be willing to “try out” cell phone video and, once they do, they will be more likely to pay for it in the future. Yeah, PPSAs could be a win for everyone.

So how do we start? Actually, we already have. On November 7th in Philadelphia, student teams will produce PPSAs about AIDS. And Verizon is paying for the whole thing! At the end of the day, we should have three creative one-minute videos ready to distribute to cellphones encouraging young people to be tested for HIV infection. You can read more about the project at http://www.nmi.uga.edu/aids_ppsa/.

We have pushed Verizon to try things they have never done before and it has stepped up every time. Verizon is truly committed to making a positive difference with their technology. But now we are going to push a little harder. Worlds AIDS Day is December 1st. Imagine using Verizon’s powerful network to push out these AIDS PPSAs to cellphones all over the world! That would open a whole new way of improving people’s lives through communication technology. Verizon hasn’t said “yes” – but it hasn’t said no either. Stay tuned!