ASA AND CHARITY ADVERTS

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

Definition

Legal

Permitted/related to the law.

Ethical

relating to moral principles or the branch of knowledge dealing with these

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

Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is the self-regulatory organisation of the advertising industry in the United Kingdom. The ASA is a non-statutory organisation and so 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 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

Charity adverts have unique advertising

Aim to manipulate audience’s emotions by showing images of sufferers

the ‘ideal victim’ is 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’.

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

Negative versus Positive Appeals

negative information and images are more attention-grabbing

When people are confronted with threats of undesirable future social alterations, they tend to adjust their behaviour in an attempt to deter the threat

the use of negative appeals has been the subject of severe criticism as they dehumanized the sufferers

the most efficient way of appealing for imperative action

Positive appeal’ campaigns reject the representation of sufferers

, ‘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’

Types of Actions

These requests can be segmented into requests regarding a specified amount, requests for an unspecified amount, requests for a bequest

aid organisations are more likely to respond positively

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.

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.

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.

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?

Vulnerable characters – audiences feel sorrier for them as they are innocent

Direct address – Speaks to the audience and is more personal

Emotive language – to make the audience aware of what is happening to the victims

Capital letters – Stands out more

Relatable – The audience is more likely to donate if it affects them personally so by being relatable it targets the viewer individually