Savings Education

A Multi-Organizational Approach to Public Education

How Paid Advertising and PSAs Can Work Together to Achieve Different Goals

The Public Education Problem

As Americans, our savings rate is the lowest since the Great Depression and the following facts illustrate how important it is for consumers to plan for their future:

  • The Commerce Department reported recently that the savings rate for 2006 was a negative 1 percent, meaning that not only did people spend all the money they earned, but they also dipped into savings or increased borrowing to finance purchases. The 2006 figure was the poorest showing since a negative 1.5 percent savings rate in 1933 during the Great Depression.

  • Whatever the reason for the low savings, economists warn that the trend exists at a particularly bad time . Instead of building up savings to use during retirement, baby boomers are continuing to spend all their earnings plus increasing debt.

  • While 58% of workers say they are currently saving for retirement, the amount they have saved is low. For nearly half of all workers the total household assets, excluding the value of their home, is less than $25,000.

  • Only 42% of workers report that they and/or their spouse have tried to calculate how much money they will need to save to live a comfortable retirement.

  • The average Social Security benefit for the year 2005 is only $804 per month. With 78 million baby boomers approaching retirement age, the low savings rate will put additional pressure on government programs already stretched too thin.What makes this trend even worse, medical advances could keep Americans alive until age 100.

    How It Started

    The seeds for the "Choose to Save"® (CTS) public education program were first planted in 1995 as the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) worked with the US Department of Labor on ways to implement a public education campaign on the importance of savings and financial security.

    The Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of the Treasury joined with over 100 private and public sector partners to launch such an effort in July, 1995. At that time EBRI formed a new umbrella organization, the American Savings Education Council (ASEC), bringing public and private partners together. Their purpose was to develop an ongoing communications initiative that would bridge any gaps between changes in political administrations.

    The initial media outreach plan developed for the US Department of Labor included a proposal for radio and television public service announcements (PSAs) but funding was not available. Fidelity Investments, which had produced and distributed a video news release from the US Department of Labor to help launch the campaign, agreed to provide underwriting for development of PSAs. The initial plan was to air the spots in the Washington, DC metro area as part of a funded partnership of EBRI/ASEC/WJLA-ABC- and two Bonneville radio stations, WTOP, an all-news station and WGMS, a classical music station. To supplement the paid spots, each station contributed heavy pro-bono advertising support to the effort. A plan was then developed to launch a national campaign using the same creative used in the Washington market.

    radio logos

    In July 2000, the Employee Benefits Research Institute, the American Savings Education Council,and the National Partnership for Financial Empowerment retained Goodwill Communications to distribute a national TV PSA campaign to broadcast and cable television outlets. The campaign theme was called,"Choose to Save®,"(CTS). It was part of a multi-year program encouraging the public to increase their savingsand provide information on the importance of retirement planning. The call to action directed respondents to a toll-free telephone number and website where they could get more information. The website, at www.choosetosave.org, features many financial planning tools and materials such as the “Ballpark Estimate” retirement planning worksheet, and over 100 financial calculators. Visitors can also access all television PSAs as well as three half-hour programs created for the CTS public education campaign.

    The initial CTS campaign was unique in a variety of ways:

    • Some of the CTS TV spots that were in the package distributed to TV stations as PSAs also aired as paid spots on WJLA-TV/ABC-7 in the Washington DC market. This guaranteed exposure among opinion leaders and legislators which are so important in terms of influencing legislation on the savings issue.
    • The initial PSA package included ten executions from three different organizations - the EBRI/ASEC "Choose to Save®" PSAs, spots produced by the U.S. Savings Bonds, and PSAs produced by the Social Security Administration, all of which had similar communications objectives. The wide variety of spot lengths, gave public service directors options in terms of spot length and subject matter.

    • A half-hour program called “The Savings Game” with PSA embedded in the program was distributed to cable stations that ordered the program thus increasing the chance materials would be used. Also, stations could replace any two of the PSAs with paid ads purchased by local sponsors, an added incentive to use the show.

    Promotional/Packaging Tactics

    In light of the tight competitive environment for PSAs - especially for television - Goodwill Communications used several promotional tactics to ensure that the CTS PSAs received maximum public exposure and a receptive audience among public service directors. These techniques included:

    • Describing the CTS PSAs in our proprietary newsletter called Broadcasters Café and CablePAK newsletters inserted into PSA packages sent to 1,200 broadcast stations and 600 cable outlets. The CTS PSA was the featured campaign in the broadcast newsletter with a front-page story and the newsletter was distributed to all attendees at the annual conference of the National Broadcast Association for Community Affairs.

    • Using colorful and graphically enticing TV PSA packaging as a way to cut through the PSA clutter at stations and get public service directors to notice the CTS PSAs. This included a six panel, four-color storyboard, a 4-color dub box label and individual labels for each dub format.

     

    • Producing a joint SSA/EBRI/ASEC website to http://www.psaresearch.com/cafegallery.html promote a national savings education month. Its purpose was to educate the media on the goals of the savings education campaign and generate publicity for the issue.

    In addition to these promotional tactics, the campaign helped to cultivate a strong tie-in between the EBRI/ASEC and their long-standing partner, the Social Security Administration. All three organizations are essentially working to accomplish the same goals - increasing the financial security of the American public. Since SSA was introducing its latest TV PSA at about the same time as the national CTS TV PSA distribution, both organizations created synergy between the two campaigns via several techniques:

    • Arranging for the CTS logo to be incorporated into the ending tag of a SSA TV PSA entitled: "Quiz Show," which was premiered in Washington, DC and attended by many SSA and EBRI/ASEC/NPFE representatives.

    • Including the CTS logo on the "Quiz Show" PSA which was shown in movie theaters in the Washington/Baltimore markets as a test.

    • Producing a banner ad jointly sponsored by SSA/EBRI/ASEC, promoted to various websites, particularly those that reach consumers interested in financial education subjects.

    • Creating a tool kit that was mailed to ten SSA Regional Communications Directors, as well as 125 SSA Public Affairs Specialists around the country. The purpose of the kit was to provide samples of all media materials distributed in their locale, inform them about the aforementioned website, and how to access media reports posted to a special website for SSA public affairs at http://www.psaresearch.com/ssareports.asp.

    Distribution Plan

    The Choose to Save® TV PSA distribution plan included nearly 1,200 broadcast TV stations in all 212 TV markets. Using proprietary data in our Public Service Advertising Analysis System, PSAs were distribution to those stations that are the heaviest users of PSA materials according to a unique PSA "user frequency index" we maintain on every outlet in the system. Additionally, the distribution plan targeted those stations, which have used PSAs on financial topics, including campaigns from Savings Bonds, the IRS and SSA. Finally they were distributed to the "big four" broadcast networks and 35 national cable networks.  
    Other distribution channels included:
    • NAB Closed Circuit - arranging for the National Association of Broadcasters to transmit the CTS PSA to its member stations via its closed circuit system. AP Radio also distributed the PSA to its subscriber stations.

    • "Super Station" Transmission - distributing the CTS PSA to WTBS, WOR and WGN, all of which reach national audiences via satellite feeds.

    • Distributing the CTS PSA to 600 leading cable systems, each of which has more than 15,000 subscribers, as part of our shared-reel distribution service called CablePAK®.

    • Choose to Save®" radio PSAs were distributed to 5,000 radio stations that regularly use PSAs as part of a shared-disk distribution program called Radio DiskPak®. By participating in the shared-CD approach, we were able to reduce distribution costs by two-thirds.

    • Finally, we packaged and distributed a half-hour video program to leading cable systems, along with PSAs.

     

     

    To promote the half-hour program Goodwill Communications created a solicitation package that was sent to 2,000 major cable systems. The package included a storyboard showing the PSAs and visual frames from the half-hour program, statements from the leading spokespersons appearing on the tape and an business reply card to order the program. Most importantly, cable stations were permitted to replace any two of the four PSAs on the half-hour program with paid commercials to make the program self-sustaining.

    Key Usage Trends


    Choose to Save® TV PSAs were uniquely coded so that each execution and each client's PSAs could be tracked independently using the A.C Nielsen SIGMA electronic monitoring system. The initial joint issues campaign generated $2.75 million in value from broadcast and cable usage with the CTS PSA contributing about half of the total airtime.


    Usage by Length:

    Half of all exposure was generated by the 60-second PSA, even though there were only two 60-second PSAs in the package of ten spots.


    Top Market Usage:

    Nearly two-thirds of all broadcast usage occurred in the top 100 markets, which is where 86% of all U.S. TV households are located.


    Daypart Usage:

    Contrary to popular thought, most PSAs are aired in the better times of the day, ranging from Early Morning through Late Evening dayparts. For the CTS campaign, over half of the PSAs aired during these dayparts.


    Cable Half-Hour Usage:

    The two half-hour cable programs accounted for $4.4 million, or over half of all the exposure generated among cable stations, with the balance coming from CablePAK usage.

    The CTS TV PSAs were also shown on the Nashville Network with 69 million viewers, as well as the Armed Forces TV Network, with one million viewers, reaching both U.S. service personnel and their families worldwide.


    Radio DiskPAK:

    To distribute CTS radio PSAs, we used our proprietary shared-CD service called Radio DiskPak which was sent to 5,000 stations. The CTS radio PSAs aired 28,266 times on 253 stations in 179 markets. Of the nine different PSAs on the CD shown in the graph, the CTS campaign generated the second highest exposure of all participants - $407,773 in airtime value, which was 47% above the benchmark for all participants.


    Total Value:

    Subsequent to the original release, four other individual TV PSA campaigns and 12 shared releases were distributed to the media which have generated just under $31 million in verified advertising equivalency value. As another way to measure success, PSAs have been instrumental in driving over 70,000 visitors to the CTS website and the TV PSAs have been given awards for creative excellence. The latest in the PSA series, "Savings Man,®" has received both Emmy and Telly awards.

    The "Choose to Save®" campaign is an excellent example of how various organizations with similar messages and communications objectives can work together to generate synergy and lower distribution costs by sharing the packaging, replication and evaluation expenses. It also demonstrates that it is possible – when done on a very strategic basis – to place both paid advertising and PSAs without “poisoning the well” of earned media. Finally, it demonstrated that cable stations are much more flexible in terms of the type of material they will use, especially when you give them an opportunity to sell advertising adjacent to relevant programming.

    For more information about the "Choose to Save®" education program visit the following websites:

    www.choosetosave.org
    www.ebri.org

    Employee Benefit Research Institute
    2121 K St., NW Suite 600
    Washington, DC 20037-1896
    Dallas Salisbury: (202) 775-6322
    Fax: (202) 775-6360

    E-mail: salisbury@ebri.org