"[The Ad Council] mobilizes the business community to help develop social messaging," Ad Council Executive Vice President and Director of Client Services Priscilla Natkins said. "To that end, we have advertising agencies work pro bono, and we have the media community donate time and space to run the advertising that is developed."
Natkins began working for the Ad Council in 1999 after working for nearly 17 years as an account manager for several major New York advertising agencies. As Executive Vice President and Director of Client Services, Natkins oversees the development of PSA campaigns as well as the relationships between each campaign sponsor and the volunteer ad agency that will produce the PSA.
"We have, at any given time, 50 campaigns on our docket," Natkins said. "Two-thirds are private sponsors such as the Red Cross, Girl Scouts, United Way, the Family Violence Prevention Fund, etc. One-third is government clients like the Department of Transportation."
Natkins graduated with her M.B.A. with a concentration in marketing from Columbia Business School in 1982.
"My summers between business school, I worked at American Express in green card retention marketing, and I thought it was a wonderful opportunity and a great job," Natkins said. "But I noticed the people in advertising who came to make presentations to American Express seemed to have more fun."
For the next 17 years, Natkins worked for various advertising agencies in New York. During those 17 years, she felt a "real passion for social issues" and did pro bono work for several nonprofit organizations. In 1998, she heard of an opening at the Ad Council and went to interview for the job. The rest, as they say, is history.
Some of the major campaigns right now are health and safety campaigns (obesity prevention, diabetes control, secondhand-smoke awareness, etc.), campaigns for education (early-childhood development, college access, financial literacy), and community campaigns (global warming, ocean awareness, and adoption). Natkins helps coordinate campaign sponsors such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and ad agencies such as DreamWorks Animation to produce campaigns such as the childhood-obesity prevention campaign that features characters from the animated movie Shrek.
According to the Council's website, Ad Council campaigns "mobilize." PSAs produced by the company have garnered much success for its clients: applications for the Big Brother Big Sister organization have skyrocketed to 620,000 per year; "destruction of our forests by wildfires has been reduced from 22 million acres to less than 8.4 million acres per year since [the] Forest Fire Prevention campaign began;" and 68% of Americans report that they have stopped someone from driving after drinking. The Ad Council owes much of its success to its wide-ranging accessibility.
"Everywhere that people are watching or consuming media, we are there," Natkins said. "We do a lot of TV, we do a lot of radio, we are on the Internet, we do outdoor advertising, and we do print. As the communication world gets more splintered, we are there. We're on podcasts, we're on cell phones, and we're on bus shelters. We have a very good working relationship with the media community to lend us free time and space in all the places people are consuming media."
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According to Natkins, one of the most effective campaigns she has seen is the Dove campaign, which features "real women" who are not "5'10" and 110 pounds and not perfect." She feels that the most effective advertising campaigns are real and speak to people on their level.
"I think advertising that talks to people in their language [is effective]. Advertising that isn't demeaning. Advertising that doesn't use shock value for shock value's sake. Advertising that, at the end of the day, gets the point across. It could be fabulous and wonderful truth in advertising, but if you don't remember who sponsored that spot, it does you absolutely no good," she said.
While she has had an extremely successful career, Natkins encourages those who are interested in pursuing advertising as a career to understand that it will be difficult at times. She gives this advice to future advertisers:
"Don't underestimate the intellectual challenge of the career," she said. "It's a lot of fun, and it's very exciting and sexy, but it's also intellectually rigorous. Be sure that you are a good communicator because it's a critically important skill, be you an account person or a creative person or a media person. Don't underestimate the importance of being able to sell an idea. Feel passionate about what you are doing."
