Charity advertising is very different from other advertising, they have very different techniques. One charity that caught my attention is the children’s charity called Barnado’s. They’re campaigns have been extremely effective to highlight the issues that thousands of un-heard children live with, e.g. abuse, drug addiction, alcoholism and prostitution.
Placement of charity advertisements is crucial to save on expenses and attract the right type of audience. The audience needs to be around the age of 35-55 year olds, it is this age that people are likely to have ‘disposable income’. Disposable income being money they don’t necessarily need, which is why charities will target them to prompt a better use of the money. This target age works well because not only do they have disposable income, but they may have had children of their own, which makes them sympathise with the ad thinking ‘what if that was their child?’.
A technique charities use is sensational or emotive images or even controversial images to create impact on the audience. For example one of Barnado’s adverts was of a baby injecting itself with heroin. I found that advert very disturbing and it caused a lot of complaints. There are a few more of the baby adverts that I found too disturbing to even look at twice.
This advert that I’ve included has used a connotative or suggestive to the audience which is called ‘Stolen Childhood’. It has a young girl sat on a bed in just her underwear and in the background there is a man lying down which is suggestive towards the child being a prostitute or that she’s being abused which is very disturbing. Her face has been modified to an old lady’s, another suggestion towards a stolen life. Of all the adverts I have found researching, it’s Barnado’s that have pushed the boundaries to the limit for me. This is one way of imprinting the ad in someone’s mind, I’m not sure it’s always the best way!