Public service announcements are getting all web 2.0 on us. That’s a good thing. With creative and financial support from JESS3 and AOL, the 56 year-old Ad Council will be making its PSA’s available for viewing and sharing across the social web.
The new project, entitled My Ad Council, looks to leverage current social media sharing techniques in order to spread their messages to a wider pool of people. One effective way of doing so is the use of online social media networks. Ultimately the My Ad Council project is looking to use social media towards social good, and we all know that’s a concept a lot of people latch onto.
Well-known examples of social media goodwill includes Causes, a Facebook application that gained a great deal of traction very early on. Causes and others, such as Kiva, have maintained their prominence in the social media space, using online social nudging and easy interaction options to spread love across the world.
Yet the Ad Council is still one of those organizations that is considered a part of the advertising industry more so than a non-profit group. That could be a major barrier for the Ad Council, as it looks to social media for pushing its content to online users. Other brands and members of the advertising industry have made similar moves in the past, receiving dismal results towards sharing from a user-to-user standpoint. The fact of the matter remains; commercials don’t always become viral videos.
Nevertheless, PSA’s from My Ad Council are well done and carry important messages. Even if the content does not go viral, it can have an affect on several individuals on a broad scale. The purpose behind PSAs is to utilize mainstream media channels in order to reach a large number of people in order to spread an important message. Online social media outlets have become additional channels for distribution in this way.
Another advantage My Ad Council content has is the presence of celebrities. They are often used for giving PSA messages, as they are influential members of our culture. Since many of these celebrities have active accounts across multiple social media networks, the dual points of access for celebrities’ PSA’s means additional opportunities for followers to at least view a given message, even if they choose not to share it with their friends.