The PUMS study did not ask specifically what media the public uses to get information about Social Security. However, the data does show that knowledge levels about SSA are directly impacted by the receipt of the SSA Benefit Statement and that became the topic of a television PSA entitled "Quiz Show."

Produced by four-time Emmy award-winner, Charles Roggero, the goal of the PSA was to let Americans know they will receive a Benefits Statement on the anniversary of their birthday.

A set was built to emulate the "Millionaire" TV program and the host of the program asks several questions that pertain to Social Security benefits, only one of which is the correct answer. Filled with special effects, the PSA puts to rest the notion that federal government broadcast productions lack imagination or energy.

External Promotion/Collaboration

Several techniques were used to promote the "Quiz Show" campaign to internal and external audiences.

• First, the PSA was featured in CablePAK News, a newsletter that accompanied PSAs sent to 500 leading cable systems as part of a "shared-reel" distribution. Another newsletter produced by Goodwill Communications called Broadcasters Café had a feature on the PSA which was distributed to the top 1,100 broadcast stations that regularly use PSAs.

• The PSA was converted into an "E-Mail PSA" to be sent to large institutions through their e-mail systems reaching employees at government agencies, corporations, and schools.

• The "Quiz Show" PSA was also included in a package of PSAs pertaining to savings education distributed by another client, the American Savings Education Council. The SSA part of this nine- PSA package, generated nearly $700,000 in value.

• We produced a banner ad jointly featuring SSA and ASEC, which was promoted to various websites, particularly those that reach consumers interested in financial education subjects.

• Finally the PSA was also introduced at a reception held in Washington, DC's Union Station attended by SSA national staff, the media and important external VIPs.

Internal Promotion/Coordination

Most national public service advertising campaigns overlook one of the most important principles of PSA marketing - engaging the local community. When the "Quiz Show" campaign was launched, we developed a variety of initiatives to insure that all 125 local SSA public affairs specialists, plus their supervisors in each of the ten regional offices around the country, were aware of the campaign, its objectives and how they could tie into national strategies. Following are the techniques we employed to accomplish this goal:

• A portal website was created for posting distribution lists and evaluation reports with reports broken out by individual SSA region. Using these on-line reports, local SSA outreach staff could clearly see which media outlets were and were not using their PSAs and they had all the contact information they needed to make follow-up calls.

• We also created a PowerPoint presentation titled: "Forging a PSA Partnership" which was presented to the Regional Public Affairs Directors. This presentation included evaluation data from the most recent campaign, how the campaign was distributed and various methods used to communicate with rank and file public affairs specialists in each region.

• To explain all these procedures and how they could be used, a unique Public Affairs Tool Kit was created and mailed to ten SSA Regional Communications Directors, as well as125 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 website, and how to access media reports posted to the site.

One of the biggest misperceptions about PSAs is that most people think they air in the middle of the night when no one is watching. As this graph shows, that clearly is not the case and in both the last two SSA TV PSAs, the majority of PSAs aired during the best dayparts from the last half of the Early Morning time frame to the first part of the Late Night daypart. These usage patterns are way above the norm.

Usage by Length

The other common misperception about PSAs is that only the shorter length spots get used. As this graph shows, 41% of all exposure was generated by the 60-second PSA. This shows the importance of having a mixture of different lengths to give stations some flexibility in scheduling. Having longer spot lengths also gives the producer more time to register key copy points and the call to action. There is minimal additional cost in adding various spot lengths to the package since there is up to five minutes in capacity available for use for the same cost.

Usage by Top Markets

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

Regional Usage

While media markets tend to be disparate, this graph shows a very significant differential between SSA Regions where TV PSAs were used. We plotted the data for TV because the SIGMA data is so much more accurate than that received from other sources and it accounts for the majority of overall exposure. The ability to report out data by SSA field offices provides an action plan for where additional exposure is needed.

Non-Users

This graph is an example of "actionable" evaluation data that can make a very significant difference in the ultimate usage and impact of any PSA campaign. The evaluator can provide all the necessary data to help sound decision-making.

As shown here, of the 473 TV stations that have never used a SSA TV PSA, nearly a quarter of them have used other PSAs more than 25 times. These stations are prime candidates for contact by local SSA public affairs staff and we have provided them with all the tolls to get the job done.

CablePAK

Another successful distribution technique employed for Social Security is a "shared-reel" distribution program called CablePAK. It was distributed to 500 major cable systems with 15,000 or more subscribers.

Targeted Messages

While broadcast and cable TV provided more generalized information, SSA used radio and print to reach minority audiences with more discrete messages. SSA radio PSAs were distributed to 6,500 radio stations using a very colorful, high-impact packaging concept called the Radio DiskPac It consists of a CD with the PSAs in various length and formats, script booklet, with a letter to the public service director, live announcer copy, and facts on Social Security. Print PSAs were also distributed to leading newspapers and magazines to reach more targeted audiences.

New Initiatives

It is every marketer's dream to reach the next generation. If you study commercial advertising, you soon learn that marketers aren't nearly as interested in yesterday's consumers as they are in those that will purchase their goods and services tomorrow. While the Social Security issue may be of greater interest to seniors who draw benefits from the system, increasingly younger workers are getting interested in the issue as well, because they are paying for the benefits that their older cohorts are receiving. For this reason and others, it is becoming more important to develop outreach strategies to reach younger workers, and one of those that has been successfully tested is theater advertising.

The number of people going to the movies today is staggering and according to National Cinema Network (NCN), theater attendance now tops 1.5 billion admissions. This potential audience is more than six times the number of people who will attend all professional baseball, football, basketball and hockey games combined. Another advantage of theater advertising is that it provides a captive audience. There is no zipping, zapping, channel surfing - just eyeballs staring at a screen giving it their undivided attention and an incredible 62% recall according to A.C. Nielsen, which is nearly three times greater than 'day after' TV recall data.

And finally, of special importance to Social Security, audiences skew younger. Some 70 percent of all movie attendees are in the 18-49 years age bracket and 91 percent of teens indicate that going to the movies is their favorite activity, according to the NCN.

To make theater PSAs both effective and appropriate for the venue, it is very important to have messages that themselves have entertainment value. That is what made the SSA "Quiz Show" of particular importance, because it had an entertainment theme.

To test the efficacy of theater advertising, the "Quiz Show" was shown in five communities in the Washington, DC metropolitan area and recall research was conducted by Low & Associates, a consulting firm specializing in market research. A total of 322 intercept surveys of moviegoers were conducted before the PSA was shown in theaters to assess baseline knowledge of key SSA copy points delivered in the PSA.
Then, on the last three days of a 28-day PSA run, 310 interviews were completed to determine SSA knowledge of those same copy points.

Of greatest importance to Social Security, the percentage of moviegoers with correct responses to the five true/false survey statements increased from 47% before showing the PSA to 73% after exposure, a statistically significant improvement of 26 percent.

In our tenure of working with the Social Security Administration, we have generated just under $84 million in verified advertising support.

Conclusion

In terms of the scope of the program, as well as the outstanding results that have been achieved over time, there is no question that PSAs have had a very significant impact on the ability of the Social Security Administration to reach its key audiences. While it is impossible to eliminate all non-PSA communications messages to determine the true impact of PSAs alone, suffice it to say that PSAs have unquestionably contributed to the nearly 60% of the American public which is "currently knowledgeable about SSA programs."