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Over the last 60 years the Advertising Council has worked on hundreds of public service campaigns on a broad range of social issues, including such well-known campaigns as Smokey Bear and McGruff the Crime Dog. George Perlov, Senior Vice President for Planning, Research, and Foundation Relations, offers a look at the role of research and evaluation inside the Ad Council.

The Ad Council has an in-house research center that is committed to extensive “front-end” and “back-end” campaign research and evaluation.

Front-End Research and Evaluation
Our campaign development model is to partner with sponsoring nonprofit or governmental organizations and their causes, and to match our partners with advertising agencies that develop public service campaigns pro bono. In conjunction with our partners, we conduct qualitative and quantitative research to guide strategic and creative campaign development.

The campaign development process includes the sequence of 10 steps in the box below. This extensive front-end research and evaluation ensures that Ad Council public service announcements (PSAs) are of the quality and caliber needed to achieve their intended results.

The 10 Research and Evaluation Steps in the Campaign Development Process


1. Literature review – The review determines what is known about the type of campaign being developed or the issue area being addressed.
2. Expert symposium – Experts discuss the issue and answer questions for the creative team.
3. Target audience research – Qualitative research taps the campaign target audience’s awareness, attitudes, etc. on the issue.
4. Strategic brief – The brief, based on information gained in previous steps, guides the creative team developing the advertisement.
5. Campaign Review Committee (CRC) – The CRC, made up of senior creative directors at top advertising agencies, reviews the brief and makes recommendations.
6. Rough ad design – The creative team develops rough storyboard and radio or print ads.
7. Target audience feedback – Rough ads are exposed and tested with a target audience sample.
8. CRC review – The CRC reviews the developed materials and audience feedback and makes recommendations.
9. Final product development – Changes are made or new ideas developed based on feedback, and final products developed.
10. CRC review – The CRC has final approval over the ads.

Back-End Research and Evaluation
The Ad Council also evaluates the results of its work by tracking campaign performance measures and outcomes.

Performance measures
These measures assess our success in disseminating the campaigns and getting the media interested in the campaigns’ issues. Specific measures include the amount of donated media the campaign garners (television, radio, print, billboard, Internet) and the amount of press or publicity the campaign receives.

For television and radio tracking, ads are specially encoded so they can be tracked as they run (by Nielsen’s Sigma Service for television and Arbitron for radio). For print tracking, we subscribe to Burrelle’s clipping service. For the Internet, we receive reports from our ad-serving networks as well as individual sites that track where our banner ads run. The PRTrak service assesses and gives a dollar value to the amount of publicity received.

Short-term campaign outcomes
We conduct pre and post target audience surveys to collect data on outcomes that include awareness of the issue, importance of the issue (saliency), awareness of the campaign, and relevant attitude and behavior questions addressed by the campaign. The posttest typically occurs six months after the campaign launches, or at a point where we determine significant media exposure has been achieved.

About a year ago, the Ad Council also launched a proprietary tracking study for 25 of its general audience adult-targeted campaigns. Every week 93 people are interviewed on their awareness of the issue, the importance of the issue, and where they are getting their information about the issue. We regularly look at these results in line with dissemination and ad response data (e.g., 800 number and website activity). In some cases, we conduct follow-up surveys with individuals who called the 800 numbers or visited the websites.

Long-term campaign outcomes
Finally, we look at some of the longer-term outcomes a campaign is designed to achieve. In cases where our PSAs have been long running and have had major media exposure, the contributions of our campaigns to long-term results are apparent. For example, since the Smokey Bear campaign began, destruction of forests from wildfires has reduced from 22 million acres a year to less than 4 million acres.

George Perlov
Senior Vice President for Planning, Research, and
Foundation Relations
The Advertising Council, Inc.
261 Madison Avenue, 11th Floor
New York, NY 10016
Tel: 212-922-1500
Email: gperlov@adcouncil.org
Website: www.adcouncil.org

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Published by Harvard Family Research Project