CharityComms

It was one of the most controversial charity advertising campaigns of recent years, costing £1 million. The 2003 Barnardo’s ad featuring a computer generated image of a new-born baby with a cockroach crawling out of its mouth was designed to raise awareness of the impact of poverty on children's lives.

Four years on, and the children’s charity’s latest campaign has caused similar controversy. Barnardo’s Director of Marketing and Communications, Andrew Nebel, admits charity communicators walk a fine line when they use shock tactics in ads.

“That ad did get a ban and we learned that although we can present challenging issues, there are some images that are so precious to humanity that they shouldn’t be corrupted,” says Nebel. “To distort an image of a new-born child, even for a laudable purpose, was probably just a shade too far.”

Reflecting the reality

This summer Barnardo’s ran a cinema advertising campaign, investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority, which featured a young boy who used a series of expletives to talk about his experiences of family life, foster care and social workers.

“The intention wasn’t to shock in a gratuitous way but to show the reality of what we do which can be shocking,” explains Nebel. “I will stop running advertising which contains shocking issues when we don’t do any more work which has shocking issues.

“We deal with children like this everyday; we don’t give up on them and we don’t want the public to write them off. That’s what our communications have to convey.”

Say something that resonates

Of course, charities use different types of advertising to achieve different aims. Catherine Wearden, Prospects Manager at Oxfam, says controversial advertising has its place but it depends what message charities are trying to convey and who they’re targeting. She says Oxfam recently used advertising to communicate the success of their Control Arms campaign. The idea was to show potential campaigners what can be done when people join together to tackle an issue.

“You don’t have to be a big name charity to get through to people,” says Wearden. “You just have to say something that resonates with the people you’re talking to. Digital media allows charities to get a lot of messages out there and they don’t have to spend anything.”

Wearden says another issue for charity communicators to consider is whether their advertising is designed to raise funds for the charity or to change public and political views.

"There’s often a very distinct line between fundraising and campaigning advertising,” she says. “For example if there’s an emergency appeal, that’s a clear fundraising ask. But with something like ending poverty, we can use ads to raise awareness of campaign actions or to ask people to give money.”

Prioritising

This is an important issue for charity communicators to consider when they’re devising an advertising campaign. In February, when Matthew Trainer, Head of Communications at the MS Society, was planning the charity’s biggest advertising campaign for five years, his communications team had big debates about whether to incorporate fundraising into the poster ads. But research from think tank nfpSynergy showed public awareness of the charity was very low so they decided to use the campaign solely to raise awareness of the MS Society and MS itself.

“It’s hard to start asking people for money until they know who you are,” says Trainer. “We decided to use the Putting the Pieces Together campaign to target a younger profile of supporter. So we tied in a direct marketing campaign asking traditional donors for cash.”

Placing ads

Often when charities use advertising to change public and political views, they’ll place ads in similar publications. Recently the New Statesman has featured awareness-raising and fundraising ads from WaterAid, Medecins Sans Frontieres and Help the Aged. Richard Rowe, New Statesman Advertising Manager, says charities advertise in the magazine because it’s a consumer title that has an incredible dialogue with government and decision-makers.

“Charities do need to raise funds and we’re good at helping them to do that,” he says. “Our readers are successful, wealthy individuals and awareness-raising does need to be targeted at those in power who can effect change at a higher level.”

Money well spent?

Naturally, Rowe argues that advertising is money well spent for charities. Barnardo’s Andrew Nebel agrees. He says that the charity’s advertising spend is less than half a per cent (£1 million) of their annual turnover (£200 million) and that all charities have to remind people they exist and are doing deserving work.

Regardless of how charity communicators choose to raise awareness of an issue, says Nebel, advertising campaigns needs to be focused from the start. He says charities are never quite sure if they’re using advertising for brand and awareness building or whether they’re asking for donations.

“You can’t do both well in the same ad,” he says. “If I throw you a ball you’ll catch it, if I throw you two, you may catch two, if I throw you three you’ll drop one. It’s the same with communications. You can’t throw too many issues at the viewer or the reader. They won’t take it in.”