Money well spent
Public service announcements on radio and television are a valuable source of promotion for many charities and non-profit organizations. But because the advertising time is provided free of charge, the stations can run the spots at their discretion, which means that the messages don't always reach the organization's target audience.
Faced with this fact, United Way of the Minneapolis decided for the first time to purchase additional time for its advertising on Mpls.-St. Paul-area TV and radio.
"Public service announcements that show at 2 in the morning don't get a lot of response," says Pam Carlson, director of advertising and promotion for United Way of the Minneapolis area. "One of the main reasons we went paid was to have some control over when the messages are aired so we can reach the audience we want to reach."
Jim Boyle, director of marketing, United Way of the Minneapolis area, says that his organization isn't alone in its decision to pay for time; many other United Ways and non-profit organizations have turned to paid advertising. The availability of public service time has diminished as the TV stations have increased their self-promotion, he says, and in addition, the United Way's major fund drive begins in the fall, just when television stations are kicking their fall season promotion into high gear.
"As stations do more and more promotion, there is less and less public service time available at the time needed to reach our target audience, so control over when the message is shown is becoming more and more important," Boyle says.
A radio and TV campaign developed by Campbell Mithun Esty, using a gospel-influenced theme song, "Trouble Don't Come 'Round My Door," aired during slots purchased in prime time and prime time fringe on television and during drive-time slots on radio during the fall of 1989.
The television commercial showed a variety of scenes of people who benefit from United Way-funded programs, including a homeless man, an abuse victim cowering in a bathroom, and two deaf people conversing via sign language. As the mood of the commercial progresses from despair to hopefulness, the images move from black and white to color to show the effect that a contribution to the United Way can have.
"It's not a direct ask, because we raise most of our money either through workplace campaigns or direct mail giving, but it's to predispose the public to contributing and make them feel good about it," Boyle says.
"We wanted to communicate the importance of their contribution in helping people who really need it. That's very consistent with what our research shows as one of the more important reasons why people contribute: they want to feel like they're helping the people that need it the most.
"In conjunction with that, we also wanted to give them a feeling for the types and breadth of services that their contribution funds, to make them see the need but also to have them feel good about contributing."
The campaign was targeted at working adults under the age of 35-who as a group aren't giving to the United Way at the same rate as older working adults.
"We're trying to build awareness and recognition among (adults under 35) of how United Way addresses current needs and changes to meet community needs. That was the reason for concentrating on radio and television (for advertising) because the electronic media are the main sources of information for younger working adults," Carlson says.
Advertising recall study
To make sure that purchasing ad time was worthwhile, an advertising recall study was conducted. A benchmark wave was done in early September of last year just prior to the start of the paid campaign. The post-test was conducted in late October immediately after the advertising stopped.
"Our board of directors was interested in knowing whether spending money on paid advertising made any difference, because while it's not a substantial amount of money in advertising dollars from the advertising world's perspective, from our perspective it was a great deal of money," Carlson says.
For each of the waves, 400 telephone interviews were conducted by Project Research, Minneapolis, with qualified respondents who were between the ages of 18-64 and who worked for a firm with less than 250 employees. This company "size target" was set because employees of medium and smaller sized companies aren't as well-informed by their employers about United Way, Boyle says.
"The larger companies do a pretty good job of educating their employees during the (fall) campaign, and some do a good job all year 'round. We're very active during our fall drive, raising funds and creating awareness in local companies, so the research targeted people in small and medium sized companies who would be less likely to have a lot of information about the United Way on an ongoing basis."
Because the United Way had run a radio campaign in July and August, and because of national United Way commercials such as those seen during NFL football games, attention was paid during the pre-test to identify where respondents came in contact with United Way commercials, so that the awareness of the new campaign could be correctly assessed. "We wanted to make sure we could separate out those influences to get a better handle on how the advertising was impacting people," Boyle says.
Results
When asked if they had seen or heard messages for the United Way that used gospel music or the song "Trouble," 38% of Wave II respondents recalled such advertising. Eighty-eight percent recalled seeing the message on television, 31 % claimed awareness from the radio.
Respondent mentions of executional elements from the commercials (such as slogans, images, jingles, and logos) increased 23 % from Wave I (58%) to Wave II (81%). In Wave II, 14% specifically played back some aspect of the "Trouble" ad.
Unaided recall of United Way's advertising jumped from 25% in Wave I to 43% in Wave II. With interviewer prompting, awareness jumped to 76% in Wave II, compared to 46% in Wave I.
Overall, television seems to have been the most successful advertising vehicle. Fifty-four percent of the respondents said they were aware of United Way TV advertising in Wave 1, and 67% said they were aware in Wave II. By contrast, in Wave II, 17% of those who were aware of United Way advertising said they heard the advertising on the radio, compared with 15% in Wave I. Unaided recall of United Way advertising increased from 25% in Wave I to 43% in Wave II.
Respondents were also asked about their general awareness of several charities. Total awareness was high for all charities, and the United Way was highest in top-of-mind awareness and in total unaided awareness.
About one in three said they were encouraged by their employers to contribute to charitable organizations; United Way was the organization supported most heavily in this manner. The research found that a company's size had a strong influence on the level of giving within the company. Employer-encouraged contributions were much more widespread in firms with 35 or more employees than those with less than 35 employees.
A success
Based on the awareness findings alone, the campaign-and the decision to use paid time-was considered a success.
"I think that you can only expect television or radio to do so much for you, so just the level of awareness alone was very significant," Boyle says. "We were very pleased by it. The fact that people could actually recall some of its elements showed that it was something that caught their attention. That's important because you have to get their attention before you can get people to receive even a brief message.
"The other thing that you see in the follow-up research is that we did some agreement scales on how people felt about United Way and what their contributions were doing and you saw some movement from neutral to positive for those attributes."
An unexpected dividend of the decision to buy advertising time was an increase in public service time provided by the stations. Carlson says that initially there were fears that buying time might adversely affect the amount of public service time available to United Way. But the Haworth Group, United Way's volunteer media buyer for the campaign, in most cases secured matched donations of spots for each prime time spot purchased.
"(The Haworth Group) was very up front about the fact that our dollars were limited and they asked if the stations could match the air time in prime time with the donated spots and they were able to get about a one-for-one match in most cases. We had approximately $400,000 in donated time, which was much better public service time than we'd ever had before, so instead of reducing our public service time, it actually enhanced it," Carlson says.
Re-run spots
Based on the success of the "Trouble" campaign, United Way will re-run the spots this fall. Another round of pre-and post-tests will also be conducted.
"Our entry into the world of paid advertising was approved as a two-year pilot," Boyle says, "so the research will help us determine what our advertising expenditure levels should be after the pilot's over. It also lets us look at the effectiveness of the advertising and figure out if there are things we need to change in it. Right now we're using the research results to develop some copy points for future messages.
"This (project) really established a baseline to measure future advertising by. We're very interested to see what the testing we do for this fall's advertising will indicate. We may be starting at lower levels than we finished at last year because of the fall-off effect. In the future, one of the issues we'll be looking at is, when you have a high degree of awareness, how do you structure your research to show differences as the awareness levels climb and the growth is smaller?"
Overall, Carlson says, the research backed up the previous finding that the United Way's biggest challenge is just asking people to give. "Our research has shown over and over that the main reason people don't give is that nobody asks them, and this project just reinforced that. There aren't any major problems with United Way, we just have to do a better job of getting out and asking people."