The Advertising Council, the leading producer of public service advertisements (PSAs) in the United States, joined today with Deep Focus, a thought-leading interactive marketing agency and consultancy, to announce a new initiative that will integrate the latest technology and social media strategies in promoting the Ad Council’s national public service campaigns. Ian Schafer, Deep Focus Founder and CEO, will unveil the program this afternoon at Advertising Week’s Panasonic Ideas for Life “Social Media: Giving Voices to Social Causes” seminar presented by the Ad Council and Google.
Through the Exponential Action Network (EAN) initiative, users will be presented with a list of participating Ad Council causes and be prompted to choose as many as they would like to support. Each selection will generate an individual widget that can be prominently displayed on the user’s social networking profile, blog, wiki and personal homepages. Each widget will track and display in real-time the size of its exponentially growing support network, acting as further encouragement for users to recruit their friends to join. The widgets will feature the Ad Council’s existing PSAs and other campaign components, including television ads, brochures and links to websites, and encourage multiple viewings and interest around these communities through live updates of their growth.
“This wonderful initiative will transform how we’re interacting with our campaigns’ target audiences online,” said Peggy Conlon, president and CEO of the Ad Council. “We are very grateful to Deep Focus for generously developing this program, which will benefit our many important social issues by further engaging audiences in the messages and creating consumer champions for our causes.”
Social networking and user-generated content websites currently account for 12 percent of all traffic on the Internet, which is an increase of 686 percent from two years ago, according to eMarketer 2007. Two out of every three individuals online visit social networking sites and there are currently more than 70 million blogs. Developed pro bono by Deep Focus, the EAN will enable the Ad Council to tap into the people-powered peer-to-peer communications created by online social networks to promote their causes through a series of new applications, or widgets.
“The EAN allows for a shareable, portable, and customized user experience that promotes the idea of enabling advocacy and social responsibility through social media,” said Schafer. “These customizable widgets serve as a means to educate, inspire, and provide audiences with the information and tools they need to change behavior and encourage others to do the same.”
The Ad Council’s campaigns are targeted to Americans of all ages and each is sponsored by a national non-profit organization or federal government agency. More than 40 campaigns are participating in the EAN initiative, including Autism Awareness (Autism Speaks), Financial Literacy (U.S. Department of Treasury), Mentoring (Big Brothers Big Sisters of America), Obesity Prevention (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), Online Sexual Exploitation (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and U.S. Department of Justice) and Youth Reckless Driving Prevention (State Consumer Protection Agencies and Attorneys General Offices).
“There’s been a dramatic increase in autism awareness because of our Ad Council campaign and we know this new tool will help us get our message out even more widely,” said Alison Singer, Executive Vice President of Autism Speaks. “As soon as we heard about this project we knew a widget would be a perfect way to help more parents learn the early warning signs of autism.”
The Ad Council and Deep Focus are working with leading social media partners to promote the EAN initiative. Clearspring’s widget distribution technology is being used to power the widgets, and MySpace, Facebook and many of the most popular social media properties have already committed their support via millions of donated ad impressions. Deep Focus will produce a series of online ads to promote the effort. Ad Council campaign sponsors will also share their widgets on their websites, newsletters and other materials. Furthermore, the Ad Council’s website (<a href="www.adcouncil.org“>www.adcouncil.org) will serve as a hub, providing a simple distribution point for the widgets.
Deep Focus
Founded in 2002, Deep Focus, Inc. is a fully independent interactive marketing agency that creates, promotes, and distributes shared, positive experiences that bring consumers closer to brands – and each other. Deep Focus delivers a holistic combination of strategic and creative services, technology development, media planning and buying, public relations and community management. Recognized as an industry leader in Social Media, Deep Focus was OMMA Magazine’s 2007 Media Planning & Buying Agency of the Year, and a winner of a Cannes Lion. Deep Focus is headquartered in New York City.
The Advertising Council
The Ad Council (<a href="www.adcouncil.org“>www.adcouncil.org) is a private non-profit organization that marshals talent from the advertising and communications industries, the facilities of the media, and the resources of the business and non-profit communities to produce, distribute and promote public service campaigns on behalf of non-profit organizations and government agencies in issue areas such as improving the quality of life for children, preventive health, education, community well-being, environmental preservation and strengthening families.
