Creating the Perfect PSA

What are three things to keep in mind when getting started with creating a PSA?

    Three things to keep in mind when getting started with creating a PSA are research, your audience, and how you grab their attention.

    One of the most important things you need to do before you start writing or shooting your PSA is to research. You're going to want to know the topic of your PSA well and finding information like statistics and other evidence that you can use to support your message is very important. You can use this research to make a more effective and impactful PSA, that way more people are affected and take something away from it.

    A very key part of a PSA is your intended audience. You can't create anything that appeals to everyone. There's going to be strategies, references, and cultural differences that change how different audiences are going to react. For instance, if you were writing for teens, they are likely going to know and understand more recent pop culture and social media; however, much older generations will be less likely to understand it and the message may not be clear to them. But not just age determines audiences. You should have a specific audience in mind when creating your PSA or any argument. Think about their values, how they may react, and how you can use it to make them understand your message. For instance, PSAs about the dangers of smoking are often only directed towards people who are actively smoking or people close to them. If you're someone who never smokes and or has no interest in it, you aren't going to need that message. 

    With an idea of your audience, you can then figure out what strategies you'll use to get their attention and change how they feel or think. This comes in a multitude of strategies both for argument and visually. You can use appeals to emotion, logic, and credibility to try and persuade the audience. Something to keep in mind is that emotion is a quick but short term way of persuading, and logic takes more time but is more effective in the long run. So ideally, using a mix of the two can get the audience to be much more open to your message and much more likely to internalize it. Appealing to emotion can come in a variety of forms; sadness, fear, and humor are some of the most common emotions used. Be that sadness for a group, fear for what might happen to you, or humor to lighten up a sensitive topic. Appeals to logic can look like statistics, cause and effect, and using quotes. Appeals to ethics are often via expert opinions or using actors that people recognize, such as celebrities.