Important pillars in delivery of mass campaign messages to a target audience through earned media

Abstract

Over the years, the remits of different theoretical and policy discourses on media issues have dealt with how conventional forms of mass media are a crucial ingredient for effective media campaigns. They have marked and interrogated, in greater detail, how this essential role is augmented in today’s era through these traditional media’s adoption of digital technology. It is against this backdrop that a vast collection of research on mass media campaigns has been conducted across the world; however, many of these studies are seemingly suffused in how these campaigns are expended to enhance the behavior of a target audience positively and submerge or ignore in toto why some of them fail to realize the same. Given the persistent reality of how some of these campaigns are failing to achieve such desirable outcomes, primarily because of inadequate funding that leads to their inconsistent delivery installments, or absolute lack of it through the media, this brief article delves into how such campaigns can still be delivered despite this financial impediment. Based on a qualitative systematic review research design, it demonstrates how mass campaigns can be delivered successfully through earned media coverage. In light of this possibility, it is concluded that relevant institutions seeking to deliver mass campaign messages should do so, at the very outset, by creating an enabling environment for such coverage to ensue. It is argued that such an environment will be realized if these institutions build a sustained series of events and news conferences specifically geared towards availing the campaign content for dissemination to a target audience at an affordable cost.