(CNN) -- Elmo and Gordon want you to wash your hands so you don't catch the flu.



Smokey Bear, the Ad Council's most famous icon, has moved from 1940s posters to his own Facebook page.



The "Sesame Street" stalwarts star in a series of public service announcements to teach children healthy habits in the face of the H1N1 flu virus.



The Muppet and the man (actor Roscoe Orman) are the latest in a long line of characters -- human and not -- to star in public service announcements co-sponsored by the Advertising Council.



The Ad Council, the charitable arm of the advertising industry, employs the same top-flight talent that creates ads for Budweiser, Coca-Cola and other familiar brands.  Watch Elmo and Gordon give the pitch »



Growing beyond its early "Buy War Bonds" posters and Smokey TV spots, today's Advertising Council is moving into social media "in a very big way," said Peggy Conlon, the organization's CEO.



"There's all kinds of ways the Advertising Council finds its target audience on the web," she said, noting that the group has its own YouTube channel.



A marketing executive endorses the approach.



"If your target is young people, television really doesn't make a lot of sense now if they're spending hours on the Internet, hours in social media," said Ben Kunz, director of strategic planning for Mediassociates, a media planning and Internet strategy firm. "You need to find a way to reach them in the media that they consume."



The "holy grail" is to go viral, as people pass the message around because they like it or think it's important, Kunz said. A gory, four-minute British PSA on the dangers of texting while driving has received nearly 600,000 views on YouTube in less than two weeks, fueled in part by Facebook and Twitter links.  Watch how the PSA has changed minds »



"If you can leverage these new human networks using mobile and Facebook and Twitter and blogs to disseminate your message, that's the real home run," he said. "But the only way to do that is to give people a real reason to become engaged."



One campaign that tries to do that is called Boost Up, aimed at encouraging students to complete high school.



Louis Caldera, who at the time was secretary of the Army, initiated the project with a call to the Ad Council because of a lack of qualified recruits.



"There was a disconnect between the societal message that said, 'Go to college,' and [the Army's] message, which said, 'Don't go to college, join the military,'" Caldera, a West Point alumnus, told CNN.



Caldera wanted people to think of the Army as a leader in education issues, not an alternative to schooling, and he sought the Ad Council's help.



"We absolutely did not want people to think this was about recruiting," he said.



The council put together a campaign intended for all students, with a particular goal of reaching Latinos, for whom dropout rates are higher than for other groups.



"It really encourages people -- both adults and their peers -- to give these kids the encouragement that they need to really reach within themselves and find the personal resolve that they need to overcome life's difficulties and graduate from high school," Conlon said. "It's a really smart campaign. I think it's very genuine, and it resonates really well with kids."



Although dropout rates generally and among Latinos remain high, "I think this is making a contribution to creating the environment in which more students can be successful," said Caldera, now a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank.



President Obama will appear in the latest series of Boost Up PSAs, to begin airing next week.



The Ad Council and its partners measure a campaign's success by how much donated media a campaign attracts. Media outlets will run an ad more
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military,'" Ad Council, employs the same top-flight talent that creates ads for Budweiser, Coca-Cola and other familiar brands. posters and Smokey TV spots, ads for Budweiser, Coca-Cola and other familiar brands.
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