Your writing assignment is to develop a script for a 30 second PSA (public service announcement) for TV or radio or video.
A PSA is a message in the public interest disseminated with the objective of raising awareness of, and changing public attitudes and behavior towards, a social issue.
Your PSA should be on behalf of a nonprofit or government agency on ANY topic. If you want to do a PSA on behalf of a brand (i.e., Burger King and bullying) that’s OK too, but most PSAs you’ll ever do come from nonprofits or government agencies.
Determine who your target audience is for the PSA.
Determine what your key points could be to reach this target audience. List them all out and then decide on your one main key point
Identify a hook that draws people in and a tone (funny, serious, etc.) and a style (emotional, logical, etc.)
Look at other PSAs on your topic to see what’s out there
Include what the action is you want people to take whether that is a personal action, visiting a website, etc. What do you want people to do?
Use simple clear language.
Make sure to check your facts if you use statistics in your PSA
PSAs of 30 seconds are typically 60-75 words at most. But you are not obligated to use that many words. Some PSAs have little text and are still powerful.
You should be writing a full script for the PSA, not just the words. So that means you are describing the scene, setting, sounds and actions taking place. The text is in the right-hand column and the descriptors of the scene itself are in the left
hand column.
Give your PSA a title/name and identify which organization produced the PSA.
I will be evaluating your writing on:
How strong your hook is (25 points)
How appealing/compelling the key message is to your target audience (25
points)
How clear your action step is (25 points)
How this would compare to other PSAs for the same topic (25 points)
