This is an overview of the public service campaign projects the Ad Council of Rochester is currently supporting. Each project is composed of a collaboration of nonprofit organizations as well as volunteers from the marketing communications field and lead by an Ad Council team member. Clients are provided with strategy development and implementation support including research, creative development, design and production, and media placement through our local media partners. The Ad Council also offers a suite of capacity-building programs to individual nonprofit organizations to improve their marketing communications efforts with key constituents.
CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE – Catalyst
Child sexual abuse is alarmingly common today. Statistics reveal that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are sexually abused before their 18th birthday. Less than 1 in 10 children disclose their abuse. That means that in 2011, there were likely 11,700 additional children in our community who had been victims of child abuse. The Ad Council and a collaboration of nonprofits led by Bivona Child Advocacy Center seek to raise community awareness about the prevalence of child sexual abuse, get people talking about the issue, and encourage them to take action to protect our children.
DISTRACTED DRIVING – Roberts Communications
The Ad Council of Rochester is organizing a community strategy and campaign to address what has been recognized as a major issue in the Greater Rochester area. Multiple community partners have stepped up to help support the collaborative effort to decrease illegal cell phone use while driving. The campaign will launch in the community in the summer of 2012.
WATER EDUCATION– SIGMA Marketing Group
The Rochester area is one of 31 Great Lakes communities identified as needing increased protection efforts to ensure future water quality. A collaborative team turned to the Ad Council in 2004 to help increase awareness and understanding regarding water quality and how individuals can make a difference. The “H2O Hero” campaign launched in May 2007, and has seen success in the form of hundreds of additional volunteers and education delivered at the award-winning h2Ohero.org.
SEASON FOR NONVIOLENCE – Jay Advertising
The most serious challenge facing Rochester is a lack of knowledge about what violence is and where it stems from. The Season for Nonviolence, the annual 64 calendar days between the anniversaries of the assassinations of Gandhi (January 30) and Martin Luther King, Jr. (April 4),addresses this problem by educating people about violence as a personal, interpersonal, and societal illness that has particular root causes. The central message the campaign aims to communicate is that violence is not inevitable. We all have the power to transform old ways of thinking in order to create new, unimagined possibilities for peace and prosperity.
LEAD POISONING PREVENTION – Roberts Communications
This initiative is focused on ridding our community of lead poisoning. The Ad Council team has created the theme “Let’s Make Lead History” and will be working with the coalition to increase community awareness about the dangers of lead poisoning and how to prevent it. The initial kick-off of these efforts was held in June 2004 with a community education and awareness summit, and a multi-media communications campaign was launched in Fall 2005. Shortly after launch, the City of Rochester successfully passed an ordinance to improve lead poisoning prevention in city homes.
WOMEN’S HEALTH PARTNERSHIP – partners + napier
Breast, Cervical and Colorectal cancer are diseases that are detectable and all have the potential for being successfully treated if found at an early stage. Regular screening has a direct correlation to early stage diagnosis and contributes to the declining mortality rate. Under and uninsured women are less likely to have access to these screening services. Increasing the rates of screening for these cancers is a priority of the Women’s Health Partnership (WHP). Goals of this campaign include increasing the community’s awareness of WHP services, use of WHP’s cancer screening services, and to increase health providers’ patient referrals to the WHP.