U.K. Spends Millions Nagging Its Citizens
By AARON O. PATRICK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 24, 2006; Page B1
LONDON -- It looks like a scene from a horror movie: Teenagers horse around while crossing a road and never see the oncoming car. It slams on the brakes, hits one of the boys and sends him flying into the air. His friends scream.
The slice of tragedy is one of dozens of advertisements ordered up by the United Kingdom government and now showing in British cinemas, on television, on billboards and in print. It and other public-service campaigns are part of a continuing effort by the U.K. government to influence a broad range of societal behavior, from big problems (pornography on the Internet, drunken driving) to smaller problems (chewing-gum litter, improper tax-benefit claims by married couples). The lesson for the teens crossing the road? Watch out for careless drivers.
The campaigns go far beyond public-service messages found in most other countries. The range of topics addressed -- and the spending behind them, the equivalent of more than $350 million a year, in 2004 -- makes the U.K. one of the most sought-after clients in Britain's ad industry. The government's advertising authority, the Central Office of Information, hires top agencies and demands attention-grabbing creative work. It estimates it is the third-largest advertiser in the country, behind consumer-products giants Procter & Gamble Co. and Unilever.
The U.S. government, in contrast, ranks 25th among U.S. advertisers. There is no central governmental advertising authority, like in the U.K. Instead, charities play a far greater role in creating public-service ads, which run during donated time on TV and radio or in donated print or outdoor space. The Ad Council, a New York-based industry group founded in 1942, has run campaigns for crime prevention, homeland security and energy efficiency. Often, outside ad agencies produce the creative work free of charge for their government-agency clients.
The British government spots strike some observers in the U.K. as excessively nannyish. Some question why the government is spending so much money to steer behavior on so many issues.
In the case of chewing-gum litter, the Environment Ministry established and staffed a Chewing Gum Action Group, partially funded by chewing-gum manufacturers, which paid a research firm to ask people why they dropped gum on the street. (The answer: Most didn't see anything wrong with dropping it.)
After ads at bus stops and on bar coasters urged people to stop discarding it in the city of Maidstone last spring, the action group hired a research company to investigate and determined that discarded gum declined by 30% from before the start of the campaign. The government now plans to take the antigum ads nationwide.
For the teenager-caught-in-the-headlights ad, police cordoned off a street, and a teenage stuntman was paid about $900 each time he was hit by the car. The scene was shot five times.
[U.K. Ads]
With political advertising banned on television and radio in the U.K., some complain that the government's public-service ads are simply political advertising by stealth. "They are trying to show to the rest of society that they are doing something good," says David Miller, sociology professor at the University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow, Scotland. "It is not just about stopping chewing gum. It's about sending a message."
Alan Bishop, chief executive of the Central Office of Information, calls the government's advertising "a contribution to democracy." Sometimes, ads need to grab the consumer, says Mr. Bishop, a former international chairman of ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising, now part of Publicis Groupe SA, where he worked on ads for Tide detergent and Pampers diapers.
With a staff of 600 producing TV ads and email ads, organizing events and buying media time on TV networks and newspapers, the Central Office works like any large marketer. It also is the coveted client of big ad companies such as Omnicom Group Inc., WPP Group PLC and Publicis. Mr. Bishop reports to the Minister for the Cabinet Office -- equivalent to the White House Chief of Staff -- and receives an annual salary equivalent to nearly $256,000.
"They are one of the most creative and creatively demanding clients that you could work for," says James Murphy, chief executive of Young & Rubicam's U.K. advertising agency, RKCR/Y&R, part of WPP Group.
In October, 27 ad agencies vying for government work got a booth at a trade fair held in an East London food market for the benefit of about 100 civil service managers and communications officers in government departments who hire ad agencies.
Britain's fondness for public advertising dates back to World War II, when the Information Ministry advised citizens on darkening their homes at night during the Blitz and preparing nutritional meals during food rationing. After the War, the Information Ministry was converted into the Central Office of Information.
Some ads explain government services. The government informs musicians how to access free government career advice and tells retirees when to claim subsidies for their winter heating costs. It is currently working on a campaign to stop smokers from littering cigarette butts on the sidewalk.
Local governments also have the advertising bug. In ads from the mayor of London shown in movie theaters, a group of women leave a nightclub, and one woman is forced toward a taxi by her friends. The shot freezes, and words come up on the screen: "If you let a friend take an unlicensed cab, you could be helping a rapist." The next shot shows the woman, lying on her back in the street, sobbing. Additional text appears on screen warning that 11 women are sexually assaulted in illegal taxis in the U.K. each month.
An independent London ad agency, St. Luke's Communications Ltd., was assigned by the British government to make an ad promoting adult literacy. The first spot showed people who couldn't read or write in embarrassing situations. But the client wanted something harder hitting, says Neil Henderson, the agency's joint managing director. The revised ad features a gremlin cruelly mocking a woman for taking a night course; when she receives her diploma, the gremlin's head explodes.
The ad, which first appeared last winter, was banned from the air before 7:30 p.m., because parents complained that it gave young children nightmares. A government spokesman says it supported making the ads "more challenging."
The government follows up to see that its ads reach their audience and, when measurable, that they work. Last year when Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered the Office of Information to send a 22-page leaflet to all homes advising what to do in a terrorist attack, Mr. Bishop hired a company to conduct random spot checks in the suburbs to find homes that might have missed the mailing. Commercial mass deliveries typically don't reach all the homes they are intended for. The government got a delivery rate in the "high 90% range," Mr. Bishop says.
Earlier this year, the Department of Transport hired Publicis's Leo Burnett agency to teach teenagers about road safety. The agency came up with a novel approach: It handpicked a dozen or so teenagers, divided them into groups of three or four, and gave each group a cellphone-camera, so they could capture themselves hanging out. They weren't told what the ad was for, and they weren't given a script.
Burnett spliced footage from the camera phones with its own film of the 18-year-old stuntman being hit by a car. The Central Office of Information spent more than $2.6 million booking time for the ad, which ran for several weeks on TV and for several months in cinemas.
A few weeks before the ad's first television airing in August, Leo Burnett put a clip from the spot up on Web sites popular with kids, without any label or indication that the crash wasn't real. It was a calculated attempt to shock British teens, and it worked: Within two weeks, the clip was downloaded 200,000 times, the agency says.
The government was aware of Leo Burnett's tactic and approved of it, both agency and client say. The footage is still posted on Web sites, although a logo now has been added to identify it as a safety ad. The spot ended its run on television on Sunday and will be shown again in the spring, Leo Burnett said. "The Government is, after all, trying to change behavior," says Kate Harrison, a Leo Burnett account manager for the ad.
"The whole idea was to keep it very natural and as authentic as it could possibly be," says a government spokeswoman. |
