Ad Council


The Advertising Council, commonly known as the Ad Council, is an American nonprofit organization that produces, distributes, and promotes public service announcements on behalf of various sponsors, including nonprofit organizations, non-governmental organizations and agencies of the United States government.
The Ad Council partners with advertising agencies which work pro bono to create the public service advertisements on behalf of their campaigns. The organization accepts requests from sponsor institutions for advertising campaigns that focus on particular social issues. To qualify, an issue must be non-partisan and have national relevance.
The Ad Council distributes the advertisements to a network of 33,000 media outlets—including broadcast, print, outdoor, and Internet—which run the ads in donated time and space. Media outlets donate approximately $1.8 billion to Ad Council campaigns annually. If paid for, this amount would make the Ad Council one of the largest advertisers in the country.

History

The organization was conceived in 1941, and it was incorporated as The Advertising Council, Inc., on February 26, 1942, On June 25, 1943, it was renamed The War Advertising Council, Inc. for the purpose of mobilizing the advertising industry in support of the war effort. Early campaigns encouraged enlistment to the military, the purchase of war bonds, and conservation of war materials.
Before the conclusion of World War II President Franklin D. Roosevelt requested that the Ad Council continue its work during peacetime. On February 5, 1946, The War Advertising Council officially changed its name back to The Advertising Council, Inc., and shifted its focus to issues such as atomic weapons, world trade and religious tolerance. In 1945, the Ad Council began working with the National Safety Council.
Since Roosevelt, every U.S. president has supported the Ad Council's work. In the 1950s, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and General Dwight D. Eisenhower appeared in the Ad Council's anti-communism ads. In the 1980s First Lady Nancy Reagan collaborated with the Ad Council on the “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign.
The Ad Council's first president, Theodore Repplier, assumed leadership of the organization in 1947. Robert Keim succeeded Repplier as Ad Council president from 1966 to 1987, Ruth Wooden succeeded Keim from 1987 to 1999, and Peggy Conlon succeeded Wooden from 1999 to 2014, when the current president, Lisa Sherman, began her tenure.
The Ad Council celebrated its 70th anniversary in 2012. The Ad Council released an infographic that demonstrated its impact through the years on issues including safety belts, autism, litter reduction, crime and wildfire prevention.
Since 1986, the Ad Council's archive has been housed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Famous campaigns

" poster was used by the Ad Council for its 70th anniversary celebration, through a Facebook app called "Rosify Yourself". However, the historic image was not produced by the War Advertising Council.
The Ad Council claimed the 1943 "We Can Do It!" poster was developed by the WAC as part of its "Women in War Jobs" campaign. In February 2012 during the Ad Council's 70th anniversary celebration, an interactive application designed by Animax's HelpsGood digital agency was linked to the Ad Council's Facebook page. The Facebook app was called "Rosify Yourself" and it allowed viewers to upload images of their faces to be incorporated into the "We Can Do It!" poster, then saved to be shared with friends. Ad Council President and CEO Peggy Conlon posted her own "Rosified" face on The Huffington Post in an article about the Ad Council's past 70 years of public service. The staff of the TV show Today posted two "Rosified" images on their Web site, using the faces of news anchors Matt Lauer and Ann Curry. However, the now-famous poster was actually produced by an internal Westinghouse Electric Corporation corporate program as part of a series of posters shown to Westinghouse employees for two weeks then discarded. It was not produced by the Ad Council nor was it used for recruiting women workers.

Organizations with campaigns done by the Ad Council

Several recent Ad Council PSA campaigns have involved partnerships with film production companies, including Warner Bros., Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Disney. Examples include a partnership with Warner Bros. featuring characters from Where the Wild Things Are in PSAs to counteract childhood obesity, PSAs for child passenger safety featuring clips from Warner Bros. The Wizard of Oz, a partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment's The Smurfs 2 to encourage children to explore nature, and Disney characters such as Baby Einstein for the LATCH System for the U.S. Department of Transportation, Pinocchio and The Jungle Book for MyPyramid, Bambi, Sleeping Beauty, and Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears for Smokey Bear, Cinderella for child booster seats by the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the Little Einsteins for art instruction.
Several 20th Century Studios films also appears in partnership, such as Alvin and the Chipmunks and Ice Age. Universal Studios films are also in partnership, such as The Lorax and Curious George.

Criticism

Radio show host/comedian Adam Carolla took umbrage with the Ad Council on his former radio programs The Adam Carolla Show and Loveline, stating that the announcements provide little value, and that the topics they choose to provide statements on are not real issues that affect Americans, such as airplane turbulence, or are issues that an ad on public radio could not possibly do anything about, such as housing discrimination. Furthermore, Carolla has stated that this valuable time taken up could be used to enlighten Americans on topics such as teen pregnancy and options, or illiteracy, topics that have a much more significant impact on society.
Given the Ad Council's historically close collaboration with the President of the United States and the federal government, it has been labeled by historian Robert Griffith as "little more than a domestic propaganda arm of the federal government."
The Ad Council has been further criticized for distracting the public by focusing on individual lifestyle changes, rather than on the need to fix social problems by changing institutions, such as the Ad Council's many corporate sponsors, or the government and military, whose campaigns the Ad Council has also promoted.
Ad Council spots are used to fill unsold air time by stations and networks. Political talk shows often have advertising time either controlled by the local station or a program's syndicating network that goes unsold; this is often filled by promotions for other programming on a station, short segments, and public service announcements, including from the Ad Council. Activists unfamiliar with the ad model of these programs or that of the Ad Council often complain to the Ad Council itself, along with the organizations which coordinate their messages with the Ad Council such as the AARP, leading the Ad Council and the organizations to disclaim they do not share the views of the hosts where their announcements air, and have little to no control about where they may be scheduled to air.