It can attract recruits into tough public-sector jobs. It can prompt a sharp reduction in rape and sexual assaults by illegal minicab touts. It can even make students buy TV licences. But don't expect a simple formula for ensuring that public service advertising works.

Matthew Parris, columnist for The Times, is a contributor to a new book, How Public Service Advertising Works, and, having trawled 25 years' experience and award-winning campaigns, he writes in his foreword: “there is no single ‘public service' methodology of advertising, and any attempt to frame one would quickly founder. Times, models, messages and audiences are changing fast.”

Government has certainly had plenty of practice as the third largest UK advertiser. “Only soap is marketed more vigorously than the Government's messages,” Parris says.

Those involved in public-service advertising face increasingly complex demands, he says, because they need to communicate a growing range of often contradictory messages. Among the balancing acts, practitioners need to target groups cleverly, recognising that the public is not an “amorphous mass” but also that scatter-gun approaches are still sometimes required.

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BACKGROUND

• Public Opinion: Virginia Beardshaw

• Chucked in at the deep end

• Steps afoot to keep data safe

• What works for us

Related Internet Links

• Public sector jobs

• Snakes & Ladders

Practitioners also need to balance fact with fear and, as Richard Storey, the chief strategy officer at M&C Saatchi, puts it, make “a careful marriage of alarm and reassurance”.

www.ipa.co.uk

Bosses put breaks on back burner

Dreaming about lying on a hot sandy beach with the sea lapping at your feet?

One council manager in three doesn't take his or her full holiday leave, according to a survey by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI). Thirty-seven per cent cite the need to meet deadlines and avoid letting down clients and colleagues, Local Government Chronicle (July 10) reports. “Without a proper break, individual performance can suffer and employers will notice mistakes more than they will absence through holiday,” says Jo Causon, the CMI director of marketing and corporate affairs. Take a break - they can cope without you.

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