Entry 43 - PSA History 3

For the most part, some PSAs were created to scare kids and the general population into thinking a certain way. This came with it's own set of drawbacks though, as the 3rd portion of PSA History shows.


Controversy Over True Motives
Another issue which received a lot of PSA support at that time was environmental protection, and then, like now, attempts to encourage the public to be better environmental stewards were controversial.
A national nonprofit public education organization named Keep America Beautiful, Inc. (KAB) was formed in 1953 with the mission of "engaging individuals to take greater responsibility for improving their local community environments." KAB's first PSA focused on litter prevention. It partnered with the Ad Council in 1960 to produce a campaign focused on the harmful environmental effects of litter and other forms of pollution.


Ten years into the KAB-Ad Council partnership, in 1971, an Italian actor playing the part of a Native American (who became known as "The Crying Indian") or “Iron Eyes Cody” appeared in an anti-litter commercial. As he looks over a polluted landscape and sheds a tear, a voice-over says: "People start pollution. People can stop it." This powerful commercial won many awards, including being named one of the top 100 advertising campaigns of the 20th century by Advertising Age. Its success inspired other environmental messages from other groups as well.


However, this campaign proved to be quite controversial. Shortly after its debut, various journalists wrote articles pointing out aspects that might not be immediately apparent to viewers. They noted that the tagline "People start pollution; people can stop it" focuses the responsibility for environmental pollution solely on individuals.


John McDonough, writing in Advertising Age, pointed out that the Ad Council's advisory panel for the campaign included some of the country's biggest alleged polluters—Allied Chemicals, Bethlehem Steel, American Can, and US Steel—and that the original campaign was funded by American Can. McDonough wrote, "The company may have loved the pre-Columbian landscape as much as the next guy—and delighted in having Iron Eyes letting people know it. But it consistently opposed state legislation designed to curb litter through container refund-deposit. They felt that the KAB-Ad Council campaign was actually a public relations effort on the part of the container industry to cover its opposition to refund and deposit programs.⁹


This campaign and the controversy surrounding it suggest that public service campaigns, like the commercial advertising campaigns on which they are modeled, are often meant to serve the vested interests of their sponsors.
 
 
The Greenpeace Movement
One organization that has certainly been controversial, but not because they promote vested interests is Greenpeace, the international environmental protection organization. Since their founding, they have combined aggressive and sometimes hostile actions against polluters with highly imaginative ways to engage the public. Their PSAs, mostly produced in-house, have great production values and appeal to a visually oriented, hip culture, which is their primary audience. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/multimedia/videos/

Entry 42 - PSA History 2

For the second part of PSA History, the article goes into talks about Public Relations Agents, who were created to influence public opinions about multiple issues.


Early Seeds of Public Relations
Another result of the Creel Committee was using what were called “public relations agents” who left a lasting legacy in the world of public marketing. Their work demonstrated the power of mass communication by creating a new breed of professionals whose job was to manipulate the “symbols of public opinion” to promote civic causes. This committee laid the foundation for using publicity and advertising to make “nationalism an American religion.⁵


Another interesting theme about these early efforts to influence public opinion was the use of symbols. There were those created by the political parties of the 19th century – in which “potent images of the soldier-statesman, the log cabin common man, the rough-and-ready frontiersman and the political sage” were used as tools to achieve popular support. These included the “Herald/Angel,” a female figure shown sometimes with wings or blowing a trumpet.⁶


According to Robert Jackall and Janice Hirota, who researched the history of public service advertising, these powerful images and calls to action were by no means the only factors in uniting the public on the war effort, but they did help mold public opinion. Today symbols also play an important role in campaigns dealing with drunk driving, cancer and AIDS.
PSAs played an important part in WWII as well, and became more formalized. Radio broadcasters and advertising agencies offered their skills and facilities in support of the war effort leading to establishment of the War Advertising Council, which became the official home front propaganda arm of the Office of War Information. Print, outdoor advertising and especially radio became the carriers of such messages as "Loose lips sink ships," "Keep 'em Rolling" and other messages supporting the purchase of War Bonds.⁷
In one of the most far-reaching of the war campaigns, Rosie the Riveter asserted, "We Can Do It!" She became America's wartime icon for women willing to roll up their sleeves and work in factories as a part of the war effort. With able-bodied men marching off to war, six million women moved into the workforce to replace the men and help manufacture war materiel. Another wartime campaign, Loose Lips Sink Ships, urged Americans to keep quiet about information that might be useful if heard by the enemy. At a time when Japanese and German submarines patrolled the US coastline, there was great need for secrecy concerning Navy maneuvers, troop movements, and other military matters.⁸

After the war, the tradition of making free space and radio time available for good causes continued. The public concerns of the 1920’s were mostly those dealing with health, leading up to the Great Depression in the early 30’s which spawned a plethora of public service messages on behalf of the Works Progress Administration, the National Recovery Act and the Civil Conservation Corps.
The practice of volunteering free media time and space had also become institutionalized and the War Advertising Council was renamed the Advertising Council. With the advent of television in the arly 50’s public service messages could be seen as well as heard.
Soon the public was seeing messages from "Smokey Bear" and other famous Ad Council campaigns such as "A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste," which raised millions for the United Negro College Fund, and the American Cancer Society's "Fight Cancer with a Checkup and a Check," which raised public awareness and funds.

Entry 41 - PSA Research 2

I think I would be doing a disservice if I were to not at least mention the GI Joe PSAs. Since most kids didn't really care for the commercials, most companys found that actually putting the PSAs into cartoons was a surefire way to make sure the kids saw them.

You don't see this practice anymore really, because either the companys make the messages subtle and subliminal, or they just don't care.



Even though I didn't grow up with this show, and these sorts of PSAs have a cheese factor, I will say that, for the time they were made in, they were alright.

Entry 40 - PSA Research 1

During my childhood, I saw alot of Drug PSAs since drugs were one of the more prominent problems that parents were worrying about. Looking back though, it's hard to say if they had any real effect on me personally. Granted, I don't do drugs anyway, but I doubt these commercials were the reason.

Of the 3, the last one is probably the one I remember the most, simply because of the simplicity. It was an interesting analogy.

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.

Entry 38 - Thoughts on the third project

Color Key Project

Project:

For this project, you will be creating a color keyed public service announcement. The clip can last from thirty seconds to one minute. Consider who you are trying to reach with your ad and give the piece the appropriate look.

Size and material requirements:

Render the file in .MOV format. Be sure that your quality is set to high.

Objectives:

Practice key video in AfterEffects. Get used to creating PSAs. Understand the basics of how to set up and use a green screen.

Storyboard Due: April 9

Project Due: April 18

This is another project that I've been looking towards doing. I remember previously using Greenscreen for a Film class in High School. Granted, that project used Premiere instead of AfterEffects.

I think this would also be the perfect time to get some practice in on something I want to do in the near future. Since I don't have a Greenscreen of my own, I know where I can find one now should I need it again, so that's another plus.

Entry 37 - Final Video / Critique 2

The 2nd video project is done, so I'm putting it here.

This video was a good practice for animation. I will say that the pacing was off. Were it not for the parameters, this probably wouldn't be the case. If anything, this project showed me something I need to work on: pacing.

Proper pacing is what makes a video a coherent and singular piece. With poor pacing, it becomes difficult to understand what's going on in a given video.

In the future, when I go to make my videos, I need to try and make my pacing better than it's been previously..