Your agency wants to introduce a traffic safety campaign in your community. Several public service announcements (PSAs) need to be produced and aired over local stations. To compete with other agencies for the limited public service time on television and radio stations, explore various arrangements that will help increase the air play of your message. These arrangements may include the following strategies.

Joint Venture Agency-Station Sponsorship

Encourage stations to adopt a traffic safety issue for a specific period of time, to become a full-fledged member of your community wide team, rather than simply a media outlet to air public service announcements.

A station that considers an issue to be a problem in the community may agree to cover the issue in news stories, editorials, or station break announcements; to involve on-air personalities; to expand coverage of related community events; as well as to upgrade the placement of PSAs into prime time slots.

At times, stations have been known to donate virtually all of their public service time to a single issue and to air PSAs on that issue at times when the at-risk population is likely to be viewing or listening. For example, one radio station aired only impaired driving PSAs for a week during the holiday season.

Commercial Spot With Public Service Tag

Commercial sponsors are sometimes willing to air paid spots about their own products or services with tag lines about a traffic safety issue. For example, during the holiday season Giant Foods tagged all of its commercials in the Washington, DC area with a short message in support of the “stop impaired driving” program. It is not costly for sponsors to modify commercial tag lines in this manner. The tag lines can be edited onto the spot or read live by an announcer.

Traffic Safety Issue References in Commercial Spots

Sponsors may refer to a traffic safety issue in their paid commercials. For over a year, Honda has tagged all of its national spots with a safety belt logo. To promote family health, a local hospital mentioned child safety seats in its commercials with the tagline, “We want you and your baby to arrive at our hospital safely.”

Commercially Developed Spots

Commercial sponsors produce many spots during a year, and some are willing to produce one or two spots for not-for-profit organizations. For example, Honda has produced seat belt commercials and liquor establishments have produced impaired- driving commercials.

To facilitate this arrangement, your agency should prepare a script on a topic that draws a natural connection between the sponsor’s product and the traffic safety topic. Keep abreast of the sponsor’s television production schedule and, when possible, use existing shooting locations to minimize the number of setups. Suggest that some stock footage be used. Planning and scheduling with the sponsor’s production team will help familiarize them with your messages and appeal to the sponsor’s altruistic nature in supporting the project. Once the spot is produced, it can be aired along with others in the sponsor’s package.

Co-op Media Placement by a Commercial Sponsor

Not-for-profit agencies can ask sponsors’ advertising agencies to use their influence with stations from which they regularly buy time to encourage the stations to dedicate air time for PSAs on traffic safety issues. Commercial sponsors, through their agencies, can also influence stations to air PSAs in more suitable time slots.

Joint Promotional PSAs Commercial sponsors often buy an entire program block (or fleet) of time slots at a reduced rate. Ask them to use some of this block for public service messages. For example, spots for United Way of America air in one of the slots purchased by the National Football League (NFL). In effect, these time slots are owned by the NFL as part of the contractual agreement with the network. At local stations, it is not uncommon for sponsors to buy an entire radio or television program slot, such as a sports report. Commercial sponsors are often more willing to donate some time slots when they were purchased at a reduced rate.

Your agency should explore these and other arrangements to determine which are applicable to both your traffic safety issues and to specific stations and sponsors. These relationships all have the potential to get more predictable PSA plays, reduce costs, and help ensure that messages will reach their intended audience. The key is to make stations and commercial sponsors an integral part of the community team. It is essential to find the right fit between the vision of your traffic safety program and the specific needs and interests of sponsors and stations.