Entry 39 - PSA History 1

Since the PSA has been around for as long as the media has been around, I wanted to know a bit more about the PSA and it's history. I found a nice PSA Article that goes into the facts in great detail. However, since the article itself is fairly long, I'll post the other parts of it at a later date.

 

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) defines a PSA as "any announcement for which no charge is made and which promotes programs, activities, or services of federal, state, or local governments (e.g., recruiting, sale of bonds, etc.) or the programs, activities or services of non-profit organizations (e.g., United Way, Red Cross blood donations, etc.) and other announcements regarded as serving community interests, excluding time signals, routine weather announcements and promotional announcements."

In non-government speak, PSAs are messages in the public interest disseminated by the media without charge.

Early Beginnings

The first entity to use PSAs that more closely resemble modern messages was the U.S. government. During the Civil War, the government sold bonds via newspaper advertisements provided without charge and placed throughout the North to raise money in support of the war. The device was so effective that the national bond sales have been credited with demonstrating “what advertising could do” and resulted in the first national ad campaigns for baking powder, soap and railroad travel, thus launching the commercial advertising industry. ¹

The first non-governmental ads that could be considered PSAs appeared after the turn of the century. In the early 1900s ads were run free by newspapers to dramatize the outrages of child labor.

The National Child Labor Committee was chaired by Felix Adler, the early welfare leader who stacked his Board of Directors with newspaper publishers who would support his cause.² Thus was also born perhaps the first example of media co-branding.

When the U.S. was drawn into World War I in 1917, the Federal Committee of Public Information was created to encourage public support and dramatize the reasons for “why we fight.” Within the Committee, a Division of Pictorial Publicity was formed by the artist Charles Dana Gibson, who recruited the leading illustrators of the time to create posters building support for the war. James Montgomery Flag drew the assignment to create the “Uncle Sam Needs You” poster shown below, which may be one of the most famous and iconic posters of all time. Hundreds of other posters which have become part of the national memory were produced by this group. All work was produced free including the design, printing and placement. ³

At that same time President Woodrow Wilson established the Committee on Public Information, which played a major role in convincing the public to support the war effort. George Creel, a Kansas City journalist whom Wilson appointed to chair the Committee, described its mission as the “propagation of faith.”⁴

With the help of people drawn from the advertising industry, the Committee created several major campaigns. Among them were:

• The War Savings Stamps drive that urged the public to "save the thoughtless dollars being wasted” through self-indulgence, while soldiers sacrificed themselves on the battlefields of war.
  
• The Red Cross campaign that asked citizens to join the organization, which was personified in the ads in a Madonna-like image entitled the "Greatest Mother in the World."
  
• The Selective Service campaign that supported draft registration.