Charity Adverts

What do these terms mean? And how are they related to advertising?

	Definition
Legal	Permitted by the law.
Ethical	Relating to moral principles or the branch of knowledge dealing with these.

Recap – who are the ASA? What do they do?

The advertising Standards Authority. This is a self-regulatory organisation of the advertising industry in the UK. It cannot interpret or enforce legislation.

Read through the ASA codes specially aimed at charities. Highlight and summarise the key findings that charity advertisements must adhere to

Charity advertisements: An understanding of advertising content

Read and highlight the information below. Summarise what you have learnt in the table.

The Ideal Victims

●      Charity campaigns constitute a very unique type of advertising, since they attempt to generate action on the behalf of the sufferers.

●      In order to serve this cause, these texts attempt to manipulate the audience’s internal emotions and intend to generate responsibility and feelings of compassion or sympathy using images of suffering others.

●      According to Kinsey (1987) advertisers have a longstanding awareness of the fact that images of particular sufferers can be especially effective in getting audience’s attention.

●      Taking into consideration the fact that the proximity created by the media constitutes both social and physical approximation, and donating is a form of pro-social behaviour (any action intended to help others - the desire to help others with no expectation of reward), spectators may feel more inclined to donate when particular sufferers are presented.

●      Christie (1996: 384) defines the ‘ideal victim’ as a ‘person or a category of individual who when hit by crime, most readily is given the complete and legitimate status of being a victim’.

●      Höijer (2004: 517) notes that in general, children, mothers and the elderly are more suitable as ideal victims than men, since solely in the case that victims are identified as genuine and real, and thus are connected with innocence, they comprise candidates for compassion.

●      Pictures can generate compassion for two reasons: these victims are perceived as more vulnerable by respondents and thus deserve their help, or respondents may feel more compassionate about these sufferers through their own experience of being more open or vulnerable.

Negative versus Positive Appeals

●      A considerable number of consumer research studies agree that negative information and images are more attention-grabbing and convincing than positive communication efforts

●      The effectiveness of negative appeals is mainly attributed to the fact that they are more likely to breach spectator’s expectations, by moving beyond messages that are framed in a positive way, thus generating greater scrutiny

●      These appeals render the viewer a witness of the horror of suffering

●      When people are confronted with threats of undesirable future social alterations, they tend to adjust their behaviour in an attempt to deter the threat, which most of the times leads them to support the cause of the charity

●      On the other hand, the use of negative appeals has been the subject of severe criticism. At the centre of these critiques is the argument that these images, by dehumanizing the sufferers, are for the most part responsible for causing sentiments of compassion fatigue to the audience

●      However, despite criticisms against them, evidence suggests that this is still the most efficient way of appealing for imperative action – hence its long-lasting existence in the public communication of suffering

●      ‘Positive appeal’ campaigns reject the representation of sufferers as helpless victims and focus on their agency and dignity.

●      Advertisements incorporating positive messages are more effective since they result in the spectator feeling more favourable towards their subject

●      Moreover, positive appeal images offer the spectators the opportunity to watch the results of their actions. Getting to see that their actions can actually lead to substantial change in the sufferers’ lives, highly motivates viewers to undertake the actions suggested by the advertisements

●      However, ‘positive appeals’ approach is not without disadvantages. It has been argued that these images as well, generate a different type of-compassion fatigue. Showing smiling faces of children, creates an impression that ‘everything is already taken care for’ (Small, 1997: 581-593), while these images may ultimately lead to inaction based on the assumption that ‘these are not really people in need’

Type of Action

●      Most times charity advertisements request for monetary donations so as to fund the work of NGOs. These requests can be segmented into requests regarding a specified amount, requests for an unspecified amount, requests for a bequest etc.

●      Loyal donors that develop long term relations with aid organisations are more likely to respond positively to any type of request, than those who are uncommitted

●      Requests for money that do not specify the amount are less likely to generate positive responses, since donors consider them as less concrete and trustworthy.

●      When the donor is only given the opportunity to respond to suffering by offering money, this could impede his/her moral response.

●      Particularly significant to the issue of audience’s reaction to humanitarian appeals is Cohen’s research on denial (Cohen, 2001; Cohen & Seu, 2002). Taking a different approach, Cohen focuses on what he calls the ‘black hole of the mind, a blind zone of blocked attention and self deception’ (Cohen 2001: 6), referring to the different ways of avoidance people use to shelter themselves from unpleasant realities and their responsibility towards the sufferers. Following Van Dijk (1992), Cohen crucially asserts that denial may appear in different forms: from defensive strategy to a strategy of normalisation and neutralisation.

The Ideal Victim	To be able to manipulate audience’s internal emotions, adverts use images of suffering others. Images of particular sufferers can be effective in getting the audience’s attention. Donating is a form of pro-social behaviour. Spectators might feel more inclined to donate when particular sufferers are presented. Ideal victim= ‘person or a category of individual who when hit by crime, most readily is given the complete and legitimate status of being a victim’. Hoijer says in general children, mothers and the elderly are mores suitable ideal victims than men because they are connected with innocence and they comprise candidates for compassion. Pictures can generate compassion: 1)    Victims are perceived as more vulnerable and respondents feel they deserve help. 2)    Respondents feel more compassionate towards the sufferer’s due to their own experience.
Negative versus Positive Appeals	People agree that negative information/images are more attention-grabbing and convincing than positive efforts. Negative appeals are more likely to breach spectator’s expectations by moving beyond messages. Negative appeals make the viewer a witness of the horror of suffering. When people are confronted with threats of an undesirable future, the tend to adjust their behaviour to be able to deter the threat eg. Support a charity. HOWEVER, people say negative appeals dehumanize the sufferers. People still say that it is the most effective at appealing for imperative action. Positive appeals reject the representation of sufferers as helpless victims and focus on their agency and dignity. People say charities with positive messages are more effective because they result in the spectator feeling more favourable to the subject. Positive appeal images offer the spectators the opportunity to watch the result of their actions, their actions might lead to a substantial change, this can motivate audiences to get involved with the charity.
Types of Actions	Most charity advertisements request for monetary donations. Loyal donors who develop long term relationships with aid organisations are more likely to respond positively to any type of request unlike those who are uncommitted. Requests for money that don’t request a specific amount are less likely to generate a positive response because donors consider them as less concrete and trustworthy.

Look at the following charity advertisements. Using all your knowledge of advertising – legal and ethical issues, the law, advertising techniques, the 4Ps, USP, advertising content – annotate why these charity adverts were banned.

Charity Advertisement	Analysis
	This advert is very graphic and quite disturbing. The use of the baby is meant to represent innocence and it is showing that poverty is poisoning this purity. Also by using a baby, the charity is showing that they need spectator’s help and donations because the baby cannot fend for itself as it has no control yet. I can see that this advert has now been banned by the ASA because the image is very distressing, moral people can see that this image shouldn’t be advertised because it us uncomfortable to see.
	The use of the child, again represents innocence and the cigarette is tainting this goodness. I can see why this was banned because the image is quite distressing and if parents of young children were to see this, it might worry them and cause discomfort. Saying something like ‘eating meat increases the risk of heart disease and cancer’, this is quite a bold statement because meat still has its benefits, it should say have meat in moderation. The bold comment makes them sound over confident and not 100% correct so this might annoy viewers and put them off the advert.
	This advert is less graphic than the other two adverts but still uses the child to gain empathy from the spectators. The use of the writing on the child isn’t nice to see because it looks like the child is just used as a scrap piece of paper to graffiti on. The writing ‘Say it with hate this Mother’s Day’ is very bold and clear to see and the full stop at the end connotes that they want to put a stop to this. However, the advert is quite unclear and difficult to understand what it is actually advertising because there is no logo/symbol of the charity.   FATHERS FOR JUSTICE

ASA 2012 Report

People in the UK had a number of concerns about charity adverts they saw on TV; these were:

•       can go too far in their portrayal of violence, suffering or hardship

•       often make people feel guilty or uncomfortable in a way they considered inappropriate, especially ones [that are graphic] distressing and even offensive

•       [graphic/shocking ads] are particularly problematic if encountered unexpectedly or repeated excessively

•       Targeted their children (in particular animal welfare ads) and put pressure on parents to donate money or do something about the issue

•       Appear on children’s channels

•       Prompted children to ask parents to adopt pets from shelters

•       Affected children emotionally or led to conversations that were not necessarily age-appropriate

Look back at the advertising techniques that are successfully used in adverts. Which ones do you think apply specifically to charity adverts? Why?

 

Using an innocent body (child, mother etc.) seems to be prevalent in all of them because to pulls at the audience’s heart strings.  The writing seems to be direct so the audience feels as though they are being directly spoken to/targeted, which makes them more likely to donate money. People that are used in the adverts all look unhappy therefore making spectators think if they donate money, they will be happier.