Sunny Days Ahead: Messages During a Pandemic: Creative Strategies and Themes in Health and Wellness Public Service Ads by the Ad Council

Public Service Advertising is an essential field of study because of its ability to impact and shape public behavior and community changes. Historically, the advertising industry has come together during the times of world war to form an association, the Ad Council, to help create awareness to the public. Over the past 75 years, the Ad Council has contributed to the various causes by communicating and advertising to encourage better habits and behavior. The Ad Council has collaborated with CDC and COVID Collaborative to communicate the right messages about coronavirus response and COVID-19 vaccine during this pandemic. The purpose of this dissertation is to study the creative strategies employed by the health and wellness messages by the Ad Council, and this study proposes to understand the differences in the ways different public health messages are communicated to society. This dissertation uses Taylor’s Six-Segment strategy wheel as a framework to understand the creative strategies of the television advertisements of health and wellness PSAs. The study uses the current television advertisements available on the Ad Council’s website to focus on the current pandemic communication strategies. The results indicate that the dominant messaging strategy concerning COVID-19 ads utilized informational (ration, routine and acute) strategies to communicate their messages, similar to how messages for other diseases are communicated. It is important to note that the COVID-19 ads also used transformational messages (social and ego) to communicate, which was different from other health PSAs. The COVID-19 ads were also empowering in nature. Thus, the dissertation also explores the various themes used in the overall messaging of public health concerns.