Using commercial shock tactics to boost revenues is acceptable, especially when the end justifies the means, writes SARAH CAREY
BOOMS AND busts create fashions of all kinds, not least for charities. Some causes just have more cachet than others.
Breast cancer is a big winner in the charity fashion stakes. There’s never a shortage of beautiful A-list actresses sporting a pink ribbon, a designer ball gown and a pleasingly triumphant story of their “cancer scare” to grace the cover of a glossy magazine. All charities have a good cause but commercial realities confer those with patrons like Liz Hurley in a revealing dress with a distinct marketing advantage.
As Maurice Neligan complained last year on the Marian Finucane Show, the result is that “you’d think there was only one kind of cancer”. The Jade Goody story is now attracting attention towards cervical cancer, which will have a good chance of competing for space in Hello! or OK! The line between nobly raising awareness and exploiting one’s medical history for publicity will be crossed even more as celebrities turn one doubtful smear test into an heroic story.
Meanwhile, the fact that cancer is principally a disease of the old that affects legs, bones, necks, stomachs, bowels, throats and jaws is completely ignored. Treatment often requires surgeries that are disfiguring and disabling and therefore lacking celebrity endorsement. The harsh reality of this competitive environment is not confined to cancer.
In media coverage of the developing world there is one continent and one disease – Africa and Aids. Yet there are many other diseases, grouped as “neglected tropical diseases” which are not only ignored but actually prevented from advertising because its victims aren’t photogenic. We are moved and accustomed to pictures of those meekly starving to death, but recently a British TV network insisted that an advert made by the Leprosy Mission be shown only after 9pm. In the world of charity, TV advertising tea time is the peak time for generating maximum response. Night time is the graveyard. By consigning the advert to a post-9pm slot, the campaign was condemned to failure and so the Leprosy Mission shelved it.
When I heard this story I had two thoughts. One was: “Leprosy? Isn’t that very 1970s?” Other than biblical references, the last time I heard leprosy mentioned was in primary school. My other thought was that I couldn’t blame the TV editors. There is only so much misery I can take and when it comes to the remote control my reflexes are not wanting.
Concentration camps – flick, children in pain – flick, torture – flick.
Viewers are hard won, harder kept and I suppose the producers cannot be condemned for being reluctant to drive an audience away by broadcasting gruesome adverts, especially at a time when children might be watching.
I was suspicious too of the motivation behind the commercial. Charities are not above deliberately using shock tactics, not simply to motivate action but to leverage a small advertising budget. One deliberately provocative advertisement can result in further discussion in print and on radio thus reaching a far wider audience than their resources might otherwise allow.
Children’s charity Barnardos employed this strategy in 2003 in the UK when they used images such as a baby injecting itself with heroin or with cockroaches coming out of its mouth. The British Advertising Standards Authority banned the adverts on the grounds that they were unduly distressing. Barnardos admitted that though the authority received 466 complaints, they received six times the donations previous campaigns had attracted.
Ireland’s Barnardos is running a compelling outdoor campaign, which is not shocking but quite effective. It’s a classic commercial of its genre, based on a deeply emotional rather than rational appeal. A sad looking boy is featured under the headline: “Don’t Turn Away From Me.” It’s powerful precisely because that’s exactly what we want to do. And he’s a cute child with impossibly blue eyes. What hope has the ugly, wounded child?
Turning away is exactly what our instincts demand when faced with physical rather than psychological wounds. Braced for the worst, I had a look at the offending advert on the Leprosy Mission website (leprosymission.ie). Even for someone as squeamish as myself, I thought it wasn’t too bad and is definitely void of deliberate shock tactics.
It’s for a form of leprosy called Buruli Ulcer which causes horrendous sores. It shows a number of children who are afflicted and is desperately moving. It’s clear that the children are suffering but the wounds are deliberately blurred and obscured. However, the advert is well produced in that it told another story too. Curing this and the other diseases targeted by the Leprosy Mission is cheap. They can cure the victims for €20 and so the motivation to click on the “donate now” button is strong.
The call to action is compelling since the solution is presented alongside the problem. There are so many problems shoved in our faces that are just too big and insurmountable: we can’t fix Africa; we can’t stop climate change; and the poor will always be with us. But we can help the Leprosy Mission cure the sick. In that context it’s a shame that the sanitising of charity into gala balls and vanity-driven egotism has resulted in an environment where this charity cannot adequately make its case for funding.
Though we are indulging ourselves in mass self-pity, our problems are those of a still affluent world. We need to fight the instinct to turn away and instead turn towards those who know what real problems are.