Charity advertising is a tricky business. On the one hand, some of the most moving advertising (and awarded, but I’ll come to that) is created for charities, often at little or no cost. On the other, some of the most effective charity marketing seems to be more downmarket, at least in the eyes of the advertising industry. Cold calling, for example, and the increasingly maligned chuggers (charity muggers) aren’t the prettiest tools in the marketing chest, but they certainly seem to get the results.

I’ve been thinking about this since reading an article by Lesley Hodder in the latest issue of New Zealand Marketing Magazine. It features an ad we created a couple of years ago for the Breast Cancer Research Trust, along with another agency’s beautiful print work for the Breast Cancer Foundation, as examples of “creating a sense of sadness that might compel action.” Our ad was well received by the creative community too; earning itself a Bronze at Axis (New Zealand’s creative advertising awards) and a Gold Lion at Cannes (New Zealand’s only win in this category at the world’s most prestigious advertising festival).

Also featured in the magazine was a campaign created for the same breast cancer charity by another Auckland agency. The billboards screamed “Seriously, breast cancer’s not a big deal,” and were designed, I think, to create controversy and pave the way for a promised second campaign phase. Instead, they created anguish in the hearts of the thousands of New Zealand women and their families directly affected by this disease.

While each BCRT campaign took a very different approach, in the end the result was the same: powerful advertising with questionable results for the charity. (The TV spot we created never had the chance to do much; apart from a brief initial schedule, the client chose not to run it.)

Which is what led to the title of this post. There’s something about the approach many agencies take to charity advertising that deeply disturbs me. With a few exceptions, charity ads are created pro bono. The agency charges nothing for creative development, account service or media planning. Come time to actually make the ad, they’ll ask favours of production companies, who in turn will ask favours of film crew and facilities like editing and audio post-production suites. Motives for providing these favours range from a desire to do good work for the cause (I’m being charitable here), to the chance of getting an award-winning ad with your name on it, to maintaining a good relationship with the next player up the chain and increasing the chance of being chosen for the next paid job.

You could argue that, even if the main effect of these ads is to win awards rather than raise money or awareness, no one is really harmed. I’d argue against that. The same agencies that make creatively awarded ads know equally well how to make effective ads. Most of the time, though, they’re not the same thing. So every time an agency pours resources into making a beautiful, moving, and hopefully awarded charity ad, they’re choosing (consciously or not) not to make an effective one instead. They’re choosing not to make an ad that raises money for the charity and saves lives, cures diseases, finds homes for kittens or whatever it is the charity exists to achieve.

Every time we make a self serving charity ad, a gay baby kitten dies of breast cancer.

What can we do about it? A couple of things.

Firstly, decide as an industry to exclude charity advertising from creative awards and award it only for effectiveness.

Secondly, encourage our clients to do good, rather than say good. I’ll end with a couple of examples from my own experience – I’m sure there are more, and would love to hear about them in your comments.

The first one is also for a breast cancer charity: Breast Cancer Coalition Aotearoa (BCAC). Our client Arnott’s Tim Tam had some money to donate and wanted to do it in a way that ensured the maximum percentage went to the charity, with a minimum spent on advertising. (Bing or Google “Pinkwashing” to see why this was a smart move on their part.) We created a social media solution that promised people $2 would be donated in their name if they became a Facebook Breast Buddy. We ran a couple of small ads and banners, but in retrospect didn’t need to – the promise was so compelling that the message spread quickly by Twitter and Facebook and within two weeks the campaign had attracted 42,000 fans. A powerful aspect of this campaign was that it worked by asking people to become exactly what BCAC told us women with breast cancer want: a friend.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/breastbuddies?ref=ts

The second idea wasn’t for a charity, but, like Breast Buddies, it was about a client doing good, rather than spending money on talking about it. BNZ asked us for a way to highlight all the good work the bank did for New Zealand communities. This ranges from sponsorships like Save the Kiwi and the Katherine Mansfield Short Story Awards, to local partnerships like (and I may be making this one up) Pukekohe Potato Grower of the Year.

The convention – and recently Westpac and ASB have been going hammer and tongs in this direction – is to run big ads in the paper and on TV about what a good bugger you are. Instead, we suggested BNZ went light on the advertising and did something good instead. We suggested they ask New Zealand communities what they’d like a hand with, then close the bank for a day – branches, head office and all – and muck in to help. We called it Closed for Good, and it happened for the first time in November. (A couple of months after they fired us, but that’s a different story.)

http://www.closedforgood.org/