ASA Charity advert

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

Legal	An advert that is permitted by law and follow the ASA guidelines
Ethical	relating to moral principles or the branch of knowledge dealing with these.

ASA are an online regulating company that monitor which advertisements can be viewed by the public and that they reach all legal and ethical standards, as well as punishing any companies that don’t abide by their law

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

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 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.

The Ideal Victim	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
Negative versus Positive Appeals	Negative appeals: ·       Shows the severity of the situation that they are in ·       Negative information grabs more attention ·       Undesirable future making them lead to making change ·       However, it does desensitize us ·       They are under severe scrutiny Positive Appeals: ·       This approach makes spectators more favourable to the cause ·       Gives he investors an option to see what they have done ·       However, it gives the impression that everything is taken care of ·       This could then lead to inaction for the cause
Types of Actions	·       Cohen crucially asserts that denial may appear in different forms: from defensive strategy to a strategy of normalisation and neutralisation.

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 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
	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.
	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

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?

I believe that the “ideal victim” technique applies to charities specifically as it gains the most attention. This is because the ideal victim is normally a young child or animal that can’t help themselves and is therefore defenceless and need “our” help in order to have a good quality life. This is why it is the most successful techniques as it exploits people’s sympathy for the indefensible and vulnerable which is why charity adverts use it the most as has the highest possibility to gain donations.