What do these terms mean? And how are they
related to advertising?
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Definition
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Legal
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Permitted/related
to the law.
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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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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.
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
