Public Service Announcement: Sample Response

 

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE YOUR CONTEXT, AUDIENCE AND PURPOSE ALL PLANNED AND SORTED OUT BEFORE YOU BEGIN SCRIPTING YOUR PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT. 

Context- WA Alliance To End Homelessness

Audience- Adults

Purpose- To End Homelessness

 

Sample Response:

Right now- RIGHT NOW- there are over 9000 homeless Western Australians needlessly suffering. With the winter months approaching, there is no better time than to act NOW. Everyone has the right to shelter and dignity… and YOU’RE part of the solution. All donations to the WA Alliance to End Homelessness helps homeless Australians to find a warm place to sleep, warm clothes… a decent meal… rather than needlessly suffering. Our website (endhomelessnesswa.com) gives more information on the valuable work we do. By donating, you will help homeless Western Australians to find housing and to prevent homelessness through early intervention. By donating to WA Alliance to End Homelessness, YOU will become part of the solution. Together, we can make homelessness a thing of the past.

 

Teaching and Learning Points:

What do you want your public service announcement to achieve? What is the core purpose of your announcement? What do you want people to do as as result of listening to your 30-second radio announcement?

 

• This example uses repetition. My key word- the key topic- is homelessness and I wanted to use this word as frequently as possible to make it stick in the listener’s head.
• I also repeat ‘Right now’ at the start because I wanted to give the topic a sense of urgency.
• My public service announcement uses statistics/facts to back up and support my topic. You MUST make your research explicit as this adds authority to your broadcast.
• Lot’s of pronouns used: ‘You’re, ‘You’, ‘We’… These are repeated throughout my script to make it clear that I’m reaching out to my intended audience and including them in the solution to end homelessness.
• I also give the appeal a context, that winter is approaching and this adds a sense of urgency to the appeal.
• Repetition of ‘warm’ is meant to make people feel guilty for the things we take for granted.
• Emotive language: ‘needlessly suffering’. You may need to appeal to the listener’s emotions. It depends. I wanted to make my listener feel guilty by suggesting that homelessness can be avoided, that it’s needless and that people suffer.
• I then wanted to make the tone a little more positive by suggesting that there’s a ‘solution’ and that people can help find this by donating to the charity.
• I explain what the charity does to support and to end homelessness.
• I give out a website address so that people can learn more about the charity and how they can donate. There’s a link on the website for people to donate.
• I emphasise that the work that the charity does is ‘valuable’. That’s also a persuasive technique.
• I end by repeating ‘By donating…’ to reinforce the importance of donating to help end homelessness.
• The public service announcement ends on a positive note; making homelessness a ‘thing of the past’.

Please note the structure is pretty simple. I start with an emotional appeal, I follow that with some context, I explain the work of the charity and then I end by showing people what they can do to help.