I’ve written before about the potential that exists in developing public service announcements via YouTube rather than the old fashioned way of developing them and distributing them to markets where you hope, out of charity, that they get played and that they win in competition with all the other PSAs stations receive. In other words, they play at 3 AM during a monster movie that no one is watching, as I like to say.
But an effective PSA developed for YouTube can not only draw your target to it, they can send it around to one another. Couple the development with the issuance of a Web News Release about the PSA, embed it into the emails of a few non-profit groups or send links around, and you have a viral campaign that is directing people to your PSA – people who are actually interested in it as opposed to insomniacs…. You get the idea (I hope).
Anyway, I came across this excellent PSA I thought worth sharing because it embodies exactly what I’m talking about. It is David Beckham doing a PSA on the need for a greater commitment to providing nets to prevent malaria brought to you by malarianomore.org. It is only 30 seconds long and has had 13,000 hits since it was posted 3 months ago. Check it out and have life imitate art….
