What do these terms mean? And how are they
related to advertising?
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Legal
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An
advert that is permitted by law and follow the ASA guidelines
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Ethical
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relating to moral principles or the
branch of knowledge dealing with these.
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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
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Charity campaigns constitute a very unique type of advertising,
since they attempt to generate action on the behalf of the sufferers.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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’.
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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.
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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
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A considerable number of consumer research studies agree that negative information and images are
more attention-grabbing and convincing than positive communication
efforts
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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
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These appeals render the viewer a witness of the horror of
suffering
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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
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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
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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
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‘Positive appeal’
campaigns reject the representation of sufferers as helpless victims and focus
on their agency and dignity.
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Advertisements incorporating positive messages are more effective
since they result in the spectator
feeling more favourable towards their subject
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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 selfdeception’
(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.
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The
Ideal Victim
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The
ideal victim for the charities would be a vulnerable young child or the
elderly as people will give more sympathy as we feel bad for them as they
will find it difficult to fend for themselves making the viewers believe that
they must step in and help
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Negative
versus Positive Appeals
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Negative
appeals:
·
Shows
the severity of the situation that they are in
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Negative
information grabs more attention
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Undesirable
future making them lead to making change
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However,
it does desensitize us
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They
are under severe scrutiny
Positive
Appeals:
·
This
approach makes spectators more favourable to the cause
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Gives
he investors an option to see what they have done
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However,
it gives the impression that everything is taken care of
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This
could then lead to inaction for the cause
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Types
of Actions
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· Cohen crucially asserts
that denial may appear in different forms: from defensive strategy to a
strategy of normalisation and neutralisation.
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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.
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Analysis
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This
advert goes against legal as well as ethical issues this is because in the
picture it shows a baby with an insect crawling out of its mouth which is
morally unpleasing and therefore goes against ethical issues. Also it doesn’t
show what product it is trying to portray. Also it is illegal as it goes
against the rules of the ASA guidelines
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This
advert was banned for multiple reasons, one of them being that it has no
scientific backing and is therefore unreliable and is voicing false facts.
This goes against legal aspects of ASA as you can’t give false facts. Also it
shows a baby the “ideal victim” smoking which you can’t do on a public poster
as it is not ethical to promote smoking as it has no positive benefits.
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This
advert was also banned as it is a very masculine sided argument and therefore
doesn’t give even rights to males and females. Also it has no factual
reinforcement either. It shows that woman shouldn’t get to be loved by their
children which is a negative cause which Isn’t the aim of charities
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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
anim al 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?
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