I Say Yes TO PSA’s ABOUT SAYING NO

Allow me to reintroduce myself, my name is Cole (oh), C-O to the L-E. If I had to make a public service announcement, that’s probably how I would start it, in the style of the great Jay-Z. If you have not heard that song, it was a staple of my earliest rap playlists in middle school (shouout to NBA2K13 for putting me on). For those that do not know what a public service announcement or a PSA is, it’s a campaign that creates awareness for important issues while delivering vital information for many causes and organizations.

Some of the first PSA’s were developed by the Ad Council, an organization founded in November 1941 to bring the advertising industry together as a force for societal good. Unfortunately yet conveniently, the United States entered World War II a month later following the attack on Pearl Harbor, which gave the Ad Council its first opportunity to provide a message to Americans. As a united force, the Ad Council pumped out propaganda for the war which was vital to encourage enlistment, contribute on the home front, and create morale among the American populus. Some of the Ad Council’s most recent PSA campaigns were Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! program and the COVID-19 vaccination initiative. While I did move an ample amount during the Obama presidency and got vaccinated and boosted, there are some PSA campaigns that hit closer to home for me. If there is one PSA that has resonated with my the most over my adolescent and young adult years, it would be the slew of anti-vaping campaigns from a variety of sources, most notably, The Real Cost. They all carry the same message:

Nicotine is a highly addictive chemical that can be detrimental to your developing brain.

As such, an “electronic nicotine delivery system” has never touched my lips. However, I personally do not think that The Real Cost can take all the credit for my vape virginity, because a lot of the groundwork had been laid by the Reagan administration’s Just Say No campaign in the 1980’s. While the War on Drugs was a critical issue then, it created an anti-drug agenda that is still pushed today in America’s school system.

While the way messages are delivered to the masses has changed since the 1940’s, the root cause behind PSA’s – social change – has not. As a communications major, I anticipate using PSA’s to aid my employer by perhaps pushing an agenda (be it moral or immoral) to customers. While the original intention of public service announcements may have been in good faith, it does not mean it has stayed that way over the last 80 years. Time will tell which side I am on.

Without a doubt in my mind, PSA’s will continue to have their place in modern communication, regardless of what shape they take. For now, we can only speculate which mediums those will take and what they will be about.