Public service announcements have always been a popular way for media companies to exercise their corporate social responsibility, either through providing airtime for charitable causes or going a step further and making the spots themselves.
But NBCUniversal has taken the strategy to a new level with its Creative Impact Lab, an original, multi-pronged program that seeks to deliver exposure to the company’s nonprofit partners while also diversifying the creative advertising ecosystem by providing real work opportunities to people from underserved backgrounds.
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The idea for the Lab originated in 2021 when NBCUniversal’s CSR team decided to step up its involvement with its 40 nonprofit partners. “We wanted to help them with their storytelling,” executive vice president of CSR Hilary Smith tells The Hollywood Reporter. “We know nonprofits need to get their message out there, but they need more funds and don’t have the resources to do it.”
The unique feature of the Lab comes in its enlistment of a third party: nonprofit creative agencies, who receive financial grants as well as expert guidance from employee volunteers from NBCUniversal in order to create marketing assets (promos, sizzle reels, social media shorts) for the company’s nonprofit partners, who become the clients. The grants go toward both funding production as well as paying agency apprentices from underserved backgrounds. Finally, the Lab comes full circle when the video spots developed in the program have the opportunity to be distributed on NBCU platforms.
A year after its launch, the Creative Impact Lab has given out $560,000 in grants to nonprofit creative agencies who have serviced 20 nonprofit clients with more than $7 million worth of in-kind media inventory across NBCUniversal platforms and Comcast’s Xfinity, and more than 19 million impressions earned for those 20 clients, according to a new progress report released by the Lab. Sixty employees from NBCUniversal volunteered as creative advisors and 66 apprentices have participated in the Lab.
Results of collaborations include creative agency PhillyCam’s work for client Cradles to Crayons, which works to combat clothing insecurity for kids. After the 30-second promo (which saw NBC Sports’ Kristen Gerringer and Jeremy Quayhackx and Entertainment Networks’ Ryan Sage volunteering as creative advisors) aired during a Notre Dame women’s basketball game, donor registration went up by 400 percent. “Within 24 hours their phones were ringing off the hook,” adds Smith. “Those anecdotes are a real return on investment.”
The Creative Impact Lab also provided training sessions for both the nonprofit agencies and their apprentices. The latter participated in the virtual Creative Connections Summit in July, where they had the opportunity to hear from NBCU executives across studios, filmed entertainment and news and network with recruiters. One apprentice has since been hired as a host associate for Karamo Show (produced by an NBCUniversal studio division) and another an office runner at Universal Pictures subsidiary Working Title Films. Meanwhile, 22 staff from nonprofit agencies — which are based in cities across the country — traveled to New York for an in-person workshop led by the Alliance for Media Arts + Culture, which received a $119,000 grant from NBCUniversal to do so.
Smith says she was pleased that more than half of last year’s employee volunteers have indicated a desire to repeat the experience. Going forward, she looks forward to further strengthening the connections between the employee mentors and apprentices, both through the in-person workshop (19 employees attended last year) and the addition of virtual coffee chats as well as through increasing the project time from three to four months and decreasing the number of mentors on each project from three to two.
“For the apprentices, not only are they getting to produce something very meaningful, they’re leaving this assignment with something really high-quality they can put in their portfolio that they can say ran on the air,” Smith says. “They’re getting a masterclass in post-production and even soft skills, like getting on the phone with a client [and discussing] what audience you want to reach, the best way to craft your message. These are important skills that are of real benefit to apprentices.”
In 2024, the Creative Impact Lab plans to serve 12 more nonprofit clients with the assistance of more nonprofit agencies it is establishing relationships with, such as Kids in the Spotlight and Pittsburgh Pop District. It is putting more than $600,000 in grants behind the effort this year, and re-upping its relationship with the Alliance for Media Arts + Culture to start a new $5,000 storytelling grant for apprentices to make a short film.
“This is a gift to both the agency and the client at the end of the day,” says Smith of the Lab, which also has tapped USC Annenberg’s Norman Lear Center to study its quantitative and qualitative impact for a report that will be released later. Of the produced assets, they will be used not only to burnish the nonprofit agencies’ portfolios but also for a variety of promotional and fundraising opportunities for the clients. “We hope these spots have a long shelf life.”
Watch a sizzle reel about NBCUniversal’s Creative Impact Lab below.
