Nonprofit advertisements: What message are we sending?
Posted on December 3, 2010 at 9:40 pm
Since my last two posts criticized the media and their representation of aid and development, it’s only fair to take nonprofits to task for their public outreach as well. The following five ads were created by major nonprofits during the past two years. If you were the average person getting onto a nonprofit’s website, what message would you walk away with?
Save the Children UK
Plan USA
Plan UK
World Vision
Doctors Without Borders / MSF
Note – to see the MSF video you must click on the post title, the video doesn’t show up when just scrolling through the blog.
Having seen these ads, the average person could easily walk away believing that all of the developing world is a senselessly violent place and that the best way to help is to give them stuff. I complain a lot about the media oversimplifying or incorrectly portraying aid. Unfortunately, nonprofits rely heavily on stereotypes and over-simplification as well.
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Posts Written in Response to this Post:
The Poverty Porn Antidote? Reality TV - wronging rights
If it’s not poverty porn, it’s gratuitous violence – Planning the Day
The Great Divide – Shotgun Shack
hyper individualism – The Theology of Joe
Viral - Tales from the Hood
Related Posts from Other Blogs
This is for my Corporates: People are not props – Shotgun Shack
Smile Train’s Marketing Decision - A View from the Cave
In Which MSF Follows Our Fake Principles from Our Satirical Advocacy Video Guide – Aid Watch
The lottery of life: is it just chance – whydev.org
a series of posts on poverty porn – Aid Thoughts
Related Posts from Good Intentions:
Autistics Speaking Day: A counter campaign to an “awareness raising” activity
Do charity fundraising activities hurt the very people they’re trying to help?
Kiva, Heifer International, the American Red Cross, and donor trust
Deceptive advertising hurts the entire aid industry
Does your aid organization’s website inform or misinform donors?
« The truth is complex • Nonprofit advertising: What message are we sending? – Part 2 »
Wow. Not sure what to say about that MSF video. The others are kind of par for the course of what I expect, not a great representation of the people they’re working with and certainly not one that gives any agency to those people. But one that’s probably effective when it comes to the average donor who really does believe that “stuff” is what is needed.
But that video…really…don’t know what to say. I would like to believe that it isn’t real and that some child’s immense tragedy wasn’t exploited in that way (even if his face wasn’t shown).
Yeah, the MSF video got a lot of criticism from the aid world when it came out. Poverty porn to the extreme.
[...] were very simply two separate organizations who happened to use the same letterhead. Saundra’s latest post on Good Intentions Are Not Enough illustrates this very well. With the exception of Plan UK, I am personally acquainted with people [...]
What’s missing in this analysis is the consumers. There’s child porn in the world because there are people who consume it. There’s poverty porn in the world…
I think Peter Singer is one of the few people who teaches others to give not out of emotion, but from their head. That, I think, is one way of doing it differently.
[...] Great Divide By Shotgun Shack Over the weekend, Good Intents did a piece titled “Non Profit Advertisements: What Message Are We Sending” with examples of NGO advertising that reinforces the very stereotypes that many of the aid [...]
[...] the large aid agencies know that and so deliberately advertise aimed at that sense. Look at these recent images put out by some of the largest NGOs-who-ought-to-know-better. It is over-simpification writ large [...]
[...] Earlier this week, Saundra at Good Intentions Aren’t Enough took the NGO and aid community to task for media campaigns that say “all of the developing world is a senselessly violent place and [...]
[...] of poor people in NGO ads? Tales from the Hood has an interesting take on it. So does the Good Intentions Are Not Enough blog. Aid Thoughts has a whole series, and Waylaid Dialectic has the iconoclastic [...]
[...] and real results when you can invest in faking expertise and fake results. Most NGOs manage to look trustworthy enough to part people from their money. Not all of them are sufficiently [...]
As a donor, you cannot win. Good aid will improve disaster response preparedness, create working health systems, or good public schools. Good aid is invisible and unexciting. Bad aid is spectacular when disaster strikes. Sending firemen from the other side of the world to extinguishing the fire, while in the neighbouring country they have the same skills. Guess who will be on CNN?
[...] issue I’ve talked about before concerning the messaging in nonprofit advertising. In my post Nonprofit advertisements: What message are we sending? I show examples from recent nonprofit advertising campaigns. My [...]
[...] The can be problems with the way we represent the people and places we are trying to help. Is it an accurate representation or one done to drive donations? What is the impact of misrepresentation? (see The Tea Test, Three Cups of Tea – A Critical Review, Fund-Raising and Program Goals Often Clash, Say Charity Officials, What message are we sending?) [...]
[...] Nonprofit advertising: what message are we sending? You can share this post on Twitter , or save it in your Delicious bookmark. [...]
[...] asked. Every fundraiser and communications staffer knows this. Whether the pitch comes from an NGO raising money for development work, a social enterprise selling a product to consumers, or a microfinance organization raising [...]
[...] information on trainings, and much more. Some notable recent posts include Admitting Failures, Nonprofit Advertisements: What Message are We Sending? and Media [...]
Plan UK sketch almost made me cry! Seriously, it is so unbearably sad, and this girl’s eyes reflect so much pain and obedience and resignation…I wonder if someone can possibly stay indifferent after seeing this one. My heart is bleeding!
[...] Devex glorifies DC-based international development professionals with a 40-under-40 list, and nonprofit solicitations insist that it is we Westerners who bear the burden of saving [...]
[...] information on trainings, and much more. Some notable recent posts include Admitting Failures, Nonprofit Advertisements: What Message are We Sending? and Media [...]