FOUR local private sector associations have launched a non-profit advertising council – Ad Council Jamaica (ACJ) – which will seek to influence positive behavioural

patterns in the Jamaican society by communicating targeted messages to the public through several media outlets.

The initiative is similar to one in the United States almost seven decades ago.

The ACJ, a partnership between the Advertising Agencies’ Association of Jamaica (AAAJ), the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), the Media Association of Jamaica (MAJ) and the Film Producers’ Association, will design cost-effective messages on major social issues and communicate these messages to the public.

“To bring about growth and development in our country or to return law and order to our society, indeed, as a nation and as individuals we must focus on the positives,” PSOJ President Christopher Zacca told the launch at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston. “In moving our country further along the path of economic development, the Ad Council is one step towards this process, he added.

The ACJ introduced its ‘Every Jamaican Can’ campaign at the launch, which is themed against the background of the successful showing of Jamaican athletes at last summer’s Beijing Olympics, and features the mothers of Olympians Usain Bolt and Shelly-Ann Fraser.

MAJ Chairman Ed Khoury said the formation of the Ad Council was a welcomed initiative, especially in light of the recent spate of crime that has crippled the country in recent weeks and taken the island’s year-to-date murder toll pass the 1,300 mark.

Said Khoury: “We believe that a vehicle like the Ad Council can do tremendous good and bring about tremendous change here in Jamaica and we fully support it and its initiative. “What we see with the Ad Council is a tremendous opportunity to be consistently focused on bringing about positive change.”

Prime Minister Bruce Golding, who gave the keynote address, lauded the use of the country’s Olympians for the campaign. The athletes, he said, demonstrated that Jamaicans can be brought together when they feel a sense of ownership, adding that they would help in communication which he said is a national objective to the society.

“There is something in us as a people that has to be there in order to make it work; people need to have a sense of community, people need to have an ownership in what they are speaking to,” said Golding. “One thing that has held us back for a long time is a lack of ownership; we have not been able to craft a national goal that everybody accepts.”

The ACJ is a model of the United States’ Advertising Council, a non-profit organisation incorporated in February 1942 as the War Advertising Council to communicate messages to the public to support that country’s World War II effort. After the war, the organisation changed its name and shifted its focus to positive public service announcements.