[Photo: As part of 2007's National Preparedness Month, FEMA employees manned information booths in Oakland, Calif., to help build public awareness and provide booth visitors with preparedness materials. Courtesy of FEMA News Photo.]
As the United States enters the seventh annual National Preparedness Month held in September, leaders from Congress and FEMA are asking questions about the effectiveness of the Ready Campaign, FEMA's national public service advertising campaign designed to educate Americans and help them prepare for disasters — natural and manmade.
The effectiveness question is difficult to answer, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office January report, which stated: “Measuring the Ready Campaign’s progress toward its goal is problematic because it can be difficult to isolate the specific effect of exposure to Ready Campaign materials on an individual’s level of emergency preparedness.”
In 2009, the American Red Cross found that 89 percent of Americans believed it was important to prepare for disasters, but 57 percent of respondents to the 2009 Citizen Corps National Survey said they had taken steps toward preparedness. “That’s the gap that we’re ultimately dealing with,” said Darryl Madden, the Ready Campaign director.
Over the next few months, Madden’s office will look at the current campaign’s effectiveness and whether the message, which he said hasn’t been altered since 2003, is still appropriate. “We want to work with our partners and all the of the messaging — with the American Red Cross, with the full spectrum of preparedness messaging entities — so that we can ultimately, by next year, really sit down and plot where we’re going for the next 10 years.”
Leading up to this year’s National Preparedness Month, the campaign’s focus had already begun to shift. The Ready Campaign and the Ad Council, a producer of public service announcements (PSA), looked at how they could simplify the campaign’s messaging, deciding to focus on the second step of the three-part ‘get a kit, get a plan, get informed’ message. “If you have a plan, you will naturally drive to the next logical step, which is ‘Well, what do I need to execute this plan?’ Which is in part to get a kit,” Madden said.
Each year the Ready Campaign produces a new PSA, encouraging citizens to prepare for disasters, focusing on the English and Spanish versions of the campaign in alternating years. This year it was time to focus on the Spanish campaign. “The important thing that we were able to learn through the focus groups is that the word itself, ‘plan,’ is communicated in English as well as it is in [Spanish]-speaking communities,” Madden said. “So we were in essence able to develop a two-pronged ad campaign for the price of one.”
That allowed the creative team to shoot the PSA in Spanish, then use the same actors and locations and, with a translated script, reshoot the commercial in English. “This campaign cost us about $1 million so you figure, in essence, we saved $1 million because what we would have had to ultimately do is shoot another English ad next year,” he said.
In mid-September, the Ready Campaign will formally release new commercials with that simplified message in Spanish and English. A Spanish version of one PSA is already available on ReadyLA’s Facebook page. The new campaign includes 10-second PSAs that focus on disasters that may impact a particular region, such as earthquakes in California and hurricanes and storms in the Gulf Coast, according to Madden. “We’re also hoping that these, in essence, spin-offs, will enable public service directors, as well as emergency managers, the tools to be able to localize that message and have a greater impact in local communities.”
In addition to new PSAs, Ready Campaign resources are now available in eight additional languages. Since September 2009, campaign materials have been translated into Creole, Korean, Russian, Chinese, French, Vietnamese, Tagalog and Urdu and posted on Ready.gov.
Promoting Action
States and local governments are planning numerous events this month to promote preparedness. Alabama hosted a Be Ready Day on Sept. 1 to teach children and adults to be prepared for disasters. The state also is planning a Be Ready Camp to teach 160 sixth-graders first aid and search and rescue techniques in two five-day programs. Orange County, Calif., began National Preparedness Month by encouraging residents to pledge to take a step toward preparedness, attracting 4,490 pledges at press time. Fairs in states including New Mexico and Pennsylvania will host disaster preparedness education booths. Ready Colorado is promoting preparedness with contests through Twitter, Facebook and the website of a local CBS affiliate.
When organizations sign up to participate in the program, they receive a kit that includes sample documents and ideas for events they can use to promote preparedness with their employees and inside their communities. The 2010 kit includes a list of 10 inexpensive steps toward preparedness from Ready Colorado’s Preparedness on a Budget campaign using the theme “72 hours for $72.” It also encompasses social media with sample blog entries and tweets to encourage followers to get involved with local volunteer disaster response efforts or sign up for e-mail and text notifications from their local emergency management office.
National Preparedness Month also includes actions the private sector can take toward disaster planning. Ready Business promotes steps businesses can take to remain operational or to quickly get back up and running following a disaster. It emphasizes the role local employers can play in promoting preparedness to their employees because employees are more receptive when the message comes from employers, according to Madden.
On Sept. 15, FEMA will host a webinar on its Private Sector Preparedness Certification Program that encourages businesses to adhere to a set of national standards intended to help the private sector resume operations more quickly following a disaster.
At press time, more than 3,600 organizations had signed up to promote National Preparedness Month.
For those looking for additional activities, Ready.gov contains a calendar of events throughout the month organized by state. The month’s activities can also be tracked on Twitter using the hashtag #NPM10.
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