Remember the PSA commercial with the crying Indian? Or the ad that said, “This is your brain on drugs“? How many kids felt overwhelmed by Smokey the bear telling them, “Only YOU can prevent forest fires.“?
These are examples of successful ad campaigns that significantly impacted public opinion on the topics of littering, drug abuse and wild fires.
Leaders and communicators attempting to change the thinking of people, can learn from these effective PSAs that learning is a campaign.
To often communicators think of learning as a single lesson or speech. While history is full of famous speeches, the truth is those immortalized speeches were part of a larger campaign.
- Before the “Sermon on the Mount” Jesus traveled throughout all of Galilee and Syria.
- Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” came after four years of civil war.
- “I Have a Dream” was preceded by the March on Selma and “Letters from a Birmingham Jail” plus dozens of rallies.
