Educators will use advertising during their programmes, but they may choose to use advertising techniques as a major component of their programme. This section looks at the reasons for this, the responsibilities of the educational team, the limitations on advertising, and the need to assess impact.
Many educational programmes require advertising, and large programmes may well develop a relationship with an advertising agency in order to assist them. Such advertising ranges from the placement of staff ads to advertising for events and products. It might involve national and community media.
What Advertising Can Do
Advertising is good at short repetitive messages, reminders, simple facts and establishing a mood (especially through television). It is less effective with detailed information and complex issues. Advertising cannot solve every problem or deal with every aspect of an educational programme, though agencies may suggest it can.
Using and Choosing an Advertising Agency
There is a much more significant use of advertising in voter and civic education. This is the use of an advertising paradigm and the retaining of an agency to lead and coordinate the entire programme.
Advertising agencies with experience of handling public service accounts can be chosen, or those that have previously worked on political contestants' campaigns. [1] But the central feature is that an agency rather than an educational institution is given the commission to assist in the handling of the public education and information programme.
Such a decision appears to solve a number of problems for those commissioning the programme. Advertising agencies immediately have access to information about voters and citizens built up through market research; they have a commercial interest in the professional conduct of the programme; they know how to produce and place large advertisements on national, and more occasionally, community impact media; and they make use of their programme management skills and contract money to develop synergy with other companies.
Of course, while the programme may achieve certain objectives, it may miss out on a variety of other educational outcomes that the programme may want to achieve. And not all advertising agencies have the same ability to manage such an account or the inclination to work with a bunch of bosses that such a commission to a civil society organisation or election management body may bring. Their involvement on behalf of political parties or candidates contesting an election might also present some problems, even if only in perception for nonpartisan efforts.
In general, those choosing an advertising strategy, as opposed to an educational programme with advertising support, will be required to enter into a contract with one or more advertising agencies and these agencies manage the account under the normal private sector advertising agency terms. In this case, there is a need for overall budgets to be set and tenders (bids) submitted, acceptable profit margins will also need to be agreed upon and the brief has to be explicit.
Project Management
An advertising campaign is not an opportunity for the organisation to abdicate responsibility for the programme, although there may be temptation to privatise the programme and adopt a hands-off approach, merely paying bills and accepting the final report.
Such an approach places the onus on the advertising agency and can result in extravagant and unnecessary expenditures, overambitious plans with an eye to advertising awards rather than impact, and occasional incongruencies between the messages communicated and the voter or civic education programme itself. There can also be poorly managed relationships with potential allies of the overall programme, especially amongst educators, election management bodiesand civil society organisations who operate outside the private sector paradigm.
In particular, organisations should understand that if an advertising campaign goes wrong, the advertising agency will not be blamed. It is the sponsoring organisation itself that has to deal with the public criticism. There have been cases where agencies have been less than professional in their choice of images and slogans, product spokespersons, or placement of advertisements.
It is therefore essential for the organisation to establish a vigorous and well-resourced project management team with direct access to all the information they might require, including the ability to conduct their own assessment of impact (see below). Such a team will develop the brief, establish the calendar, and oversee each and every aspect of the project. The agency will report to the team and will not be responsible for convening the meetings at which reports are made and decisions canvassed.
Tenders and Contracts
Those responsible for implementing a programme, especially one related to elections, are under time pressures. They may be inclined to hand over this aspect of their responsibility as quickly as possible. Such an approach may include a decision to consult an advertising agency in order to determine what can and should be done, and then to request the same agency to go ahead and do it. There might even have been an informal recommendation that such and such an agency could handle the job.
There are dangers to omitting an opportunity for competitive tendering (bidding) that can enable the organisation to discover alternative approaches to the project and ensure that an appropriate price is paid.
There are ways to speed up this process, and to develop the internal capacity to establish the original project brief. An initial proposal can be sought from an agreed list of agencies, and then a final brief can be prepared on that basis; or a task group of individuals can be established to develop the brief.
The tender (bid) document can make various organisational demands that ensure that the job is spread between a number of advertising agencies each of whom have some particular expertise, without allowing the industry to dictate the terms of the tender (bid).
When an initial exploration has to be done, or the preparation of a tender (bid) document and investigation of the initial conditions within which the project will have to operate, it is better to exclude those who prepare this material from submitting a final tender (bid). Otherwise there is a temptation to slant the documentation in favour of the expertise of one's own organisation. For guidelines on how to conduct a competitive tender (bid) please refer to Newspaper - Sweden - Multilingual.
When it has been agreed that a tender will be given, care should be taken with the contract in terms of cost overruns. [2] It is far too easy to allow an agency to say that the brief was inaccurate, or the expectations of the client have grown, or that the time available was incorrectly estimated. With election management bodies under pressure to get an election right at almost any cost, there are possibilities for agencies to escalate the cost of the contract beyond the initial figure. [3]
Understanding Terms
Advertising agencies speak a language of their own. Educators can misunderstand it. It is important to take some time to ensure that any project management team is on the same wave length as the agency.
In particular there are two types of activities with relevance to a campaign being conducted through an advertising paradigm. Agencies talk about above-the-line activities, which involve the standard and tried forms of advertising campaigns through the national and local media: press, radio, and television spots, and billboards. They also talk about below-the-line activity, which means the management of events to achieve the ends of the campaign. Amongst these below-the-line activities are the distribution of trinkets, the running of game shows, product placement, and conducting of public events.
Involvement of Civil Society
It may be assumed that the activities of civil society can be managed through those agencies with experience in below-the-line campaigns. This may or may not be true, but there is evidence to suggest that the control over such activities normally exercised by advertisers is not acceptable to nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and membership-based organisations. Nor are they satisfied to have their activities dictated, but prefer to be involved in the strategic planning stage, something that is often not possible where an agency has received the initial contract.
However, there are ways in which civil society activity can be stimulated to support an above-the-line campaign. This is best done not by the agency but by those who understand and work with civil society organisations on a regular basis (see Organised Civil Society as Stakeholders in the Voter Education Mandate).
Impact Assessment
There is evidence to suggest that face-to-face educational activities (direct approaches) make a greater impact on people's levels of confidence in voting and elections than advertising spots (indirect approaches). There is also some difficulty in separating the impact of television spots (normally considered the most important factor in an advertising campaign, and the most expensive) from more general television coverage, especially during election campaigns.
Large advertising campaigns also determine the organisational design of the organisation sponsoring them, as they have particular effects on response from the public. Advertising a toll-free number results in a massive spike of calls to that number followed by a rapid fall off, unless the advertisement is repeated. Organisations may have to gear up to cope with the spike when they actually do not need that capacity normally.
There are examples of small businesses suffering because they cannot cope with the demand that a successful national campaign may elicit, and there is also some danger that an organisation might come to be associated with the matter advertised. For example, a civil society organisation promotes a free and fair vote, and then the election fails: at the very moment when the organisation is most needed, its association with a failure makes the public blame it.
These may not be matters that a large company has to consider, but the smaller and more ephemeral democracy coalitions, election management bodies, individual NGOs, and membership organisations have to consider them.
More important than nervousness about embarking on the exercise itself is the assessment of the success of the campaign. An advertising agency has a vested interest in ensuring that the project is successful.
If the criteria by which success is measured are not agreed upon at the beginning, criteria will be put forward at the end that can only be measured positively. In a programme with qualitative goals as an educational programme might have, it is as easy for an agency to massage its achievements as it is for an educational organisation or NGO. A report that focuses on the number of advertisements placed (a quantitative indicator) might produce more positive results, for example, than one that considered their impact on behaviour.
What is more, it is possible to manage impact not only at the end but also during a campaign by selecting the areas where success is likely because of other factors rather than dealing with the difficult areas.
There is a need for individuals managing a project to set in place a monitoring programme and their own research facility for measuring impact. They should make the information they obtain available to the agency, and may even write into the contract the manner in which such information will be collected and how it will be integrated into the campaign as it progresses.
They also should develop a mechanism for ensuring that the programme is responsive to this information, and that there is sufficient flexibility to renegotiate the brief to deal with changes in the initial conditions, in particular, the political context.
There are examples of programmes that have done this and kept very close to the changing dynamics of the overall context and to the evolving needs of the client organisation and their interpretation of the public need. There also have been programmes that have remained true to their original strategy despite evidence that the programme was not dealing with the questions being asked by the public. But that is one of the dangers of contracting an agency more used to selling a product than encouraging people to learn and change.
The Relationship between Advertising and Public Education Programmes
Advertising plays an important role in ensuring the success of a public education programme. It is an essential component and asset of such a programme. But in general, a public education programme should seek to extend its reach beyond the information and marketing approach into areas where advertising agencies may not normally tread. However, the success of public education programmes, and the continuing use of advertising agencies to develop components of such public service projects, has resulted in a convergence between those involved in education and those who are advertisers.
The question that has to be resolved then is not which is better, but who is in control of the public service programme. Given the political needs of public education programmes, their social goals, and the importance of public consultation and public participation, it appears natural that advertising agencies will continue to act as providers of a particular specialized service rather than as managers of the overall programme.
Notes:
[1] Such work is normally put out to tender but there are countries where work on political campaigns would disqualify an advertising agency from taking on a nonpartisan voter education account.
[2] While an election management body or a voter education organisation may not have much experience with contracts, there is likely to be a more experienced body within government: indeed election management bodies which are part of a government office may have to work through a body such as a tender board.
[3] Those contracting agencies should look at the ways in which they charge for their services. They may request a direct payment for work done. Or they might charge a commission on advertisements placed. While the second might appear cheaper, there is an incentive for the agency to over-advertise in order to boost its revenue. It is essential that the financial implications of advertising be discussed before contracts are signed.
