ADVERTISING: The Cause Agency

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Its annual budget could not pay the expense accounts of a Madison Avenue agency, and its roster of clients is more in the category of "Who's That?" than Who's Who. Yet Public Interest Communications, a nine-month-old, nonprofit San Francisco ad agency, is making a satisfying unconventional splash in the business of mass persuasion. PIC has successfully put well-tested formulas for selling deodorants and detergents behind a wide range of controversial or overlooked causes that range from supporting drug-treatment centers in residential neighborhoods to saving whales from extinction.

Unlike traditional cause promotions, which are often earnestly dull, signature-crammed exhortations in pamphlets, PIC ads use sprightly graphics and tough, well-turned copy. And the ads are typically placed in mass-circulation dailies and on radio stations. The agency, devoted exclusively to public service ads, gets its total annual revenue of $103,000 in the form of individual donations and grants from such liberal-inclined institutions as the Washington-based Stern Family Fund, the Kaplan Fund in Manhattan, and the San Francisco Foundation.

The agency's president, King Harris, 60, a veteran adman formerly with the Campbell-Ewald Co., and PIC's creative director, Dugald Stermer, 36, a freelance artist, work without pay. The highest weekly salary paid to the full-time staff of three is $150. PIC researches, creates and places its ads for nothing, charging only for material and the cost of printing or broadcasting. It often gets help from other admen, who donate their services without cost.

Whale Hunting. PIC's most successful campaign was done in conjunction with Maxwell Arnold, chief of a San Francisco agency. For $500 Arnold produced a newspaper ad to raise funds for a North Vietnamese hospital that was hit by U.S. bombers just before Christmas. The ad, headlined OUR PRESIDENT WAS ANGRY, SO BACH MAI HOSPITAL IN HANOI WAS DESTROYED, drew

$500,000 in donations. Another PIC ad, for Prison Media Project, a group seeking better job training for inmates, shows a convict at work under the headline: I MAKE AMERICAN FLAGS FOR 350 A DAY. PIC has also created promotions for the Lawyers Guild, which wants to reform grand juries, and Project Jonah, an organization that is trying to stop whale hunting.

PIC now hopes to expand its audience by getting the Advertising Council, which serves as a conduit for public service ads on major broadcast networks, to accept some of its promotions for placement. Despite low salaries, PIC staffers remain enthusiastic about their work. Says Stermer: "It beats hell out of selling soap."