We Can!® Public Service Announcements Make Waves on Airwaves
Posted May 12, 2011
If you've turned on your car radio or television in the past month, you may have heard or seen a series of public service announcements (PSAs) about We Can!.
The PSAs promote We Can!'s three key behaviors: eating right, being more active, and reducing screen time�to help children maintain a healthy weight.
The ads also encourage listeners and viewers to visit the We Can! website to order a copy of the We Can! parent handbook (and access other resources).
There are three PSAs currently airing: two for television and one for radio. Click on the following hyperlinks to see or hear them:
Television
- We Can!: Parents Have The Power; English, :30
and :60 - ¡Podemos!: Spanish, :30, which is part of a broader push to reach Spanish-speaking parents and caregivers. Read more about it in a separate eNewsletter story.
Radio
Released in mid-April, the We Can!: Parents Have the Power television PSA reached nearly 2 million viewers in its first 3 weeks on air.
And even more parents can view the PSA, as it is being run on the waiting-room monitors of some 1,500 pediatricians' offices nationwide.
But that's not all!
Scroll through the rest of this eNewsletter for more stories about other efforts to build awareness for the program.
Lastly, we encourage you to contact Melissa McGowan (mcgowanm@mail.nih.gov) on the We Can! national team for a free DVD of the television PSAs. Help get the word out about We Can! by sending copies to the public service directors at your local television stations, urging them to run it (or running the PSAs during your own conferences or presentations).
If you are a We Can! community site, we encourage you to customize the "donut" versions of the English TV PSAs offered on that DVD with your logo or telephone number, so that potential partners and participants can reach you. And, don't be afraid to tell your local TV public service directors of this local tie-in; it will make the PSA more relevant to them and increase the chances that they will run it.
Never approached your local media before? It's never too late to start; just read Reaching the Media: A Toolkit for We Can! Communities. Don't forget to also review the program's many other promotional materials, most of which can be downloaded for free.
