Barnardo's defends shock adverts

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1385881.stm


From the BBC News Website
Wednesday, 13 June, 2001, 14:24 GMT 15:24 UK

Children's charity Barnardo's shocking new series of anti-child abuse advertisements has prompted concern from the advertising industry's own advisory body.

The £1m campaign in national newspapers aims to show the effects of child cruelty in later life.

The charity has already modified two of five images of abuse victims, in the light of concerns from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

But it remains locked in dispute with the advisory body about whether two other images in the new campaign breach advertising codes.

The campaign - which uses fictional case studies instead of real people - will continue for the next six weeks and will be re-run in the autumn.

The content is meant to shock

One of the adverts which the ASA fears may cause offence shows a prostitute buried beneath rubbish in a car park, with only her knickers, legs and blonde hair showing.

She was neglected as a child, the advert says, and was lured into the sex trade and beaten to death by her pimp.

Andrew Nebel, the charity's director of marketing and communications, told BBC Radio 4's You and Yours programme that such shock tactics were justified.

'Lost dignity'

"This is an individual that has lost all dignity.

"They have lost their life and there are a worthless object.

Barnardo's says it wants to save lives

"Barnardo's is about trying to prevent children from being worthless adults whether they are alive or dead."

And he said the campaign had to be hard hitting for maximum impact.

"The younger that we can start working with children the more we can hope to steer them away from these dreadful and negative outcomes."

The other advert which has raised concern is of a young alcoholic drowning in a canal.

Wasted life

The first image in the campaign showed a man's barefoot body dangling from a noose in a rundown garage, with a dirty sheet blocking the light from a window.

The text said: "John Monk. Died: Age 4 years. From the age of four, John was raped by his grandad and a large part of him died. His hope and joy died. His future died.

"Twenty-two years later, he hanged himself and died for real. What a waste.

"At Barnardo's we want to save people like John from a living death."

The charity has already removed graphic images of blood from adverts showing a man who has shot himself and of a teenage drug addict having fallen from a building.

Last year's "heroin baby" generated complaints

Barnardo's provoked complaints a year and a half ago with its picture of a baby injecting heroin.

The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) said that image was "too shocking" to be shown.

But Barnardo's said it was highly effective in highlighting the plight of abused or disadvantaged children.

The children's charity spends 88p of every pound it raises on charity projects and last year raised more than £30m.

'Offensive' Barnardo's advert draws complaints

From The Independent Online. By Graham Hiscott

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/offensive-barnardos-advert-draws-complaints-735580.html

Thursday, 13 November 2003

Dozens of people complained yesterday to the advertising watchdog about a hard-hitting new campaign for the children's charity Barnardo's.

The first in the series of newspaper advertisements from Barnardo's shows a new-born baby with a cockroach crawling out of his mouth.

More than 60 people contacted the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) through its website by lunchtime.

Another ad in the campaign features a baby with a methylated spirits bottle in its mouth. A third shows a baby with a syringe. The headline says: "There are no silver spoons for children born into poverty."

An ASA spokeswoman said the complaints received so far were on the grounds that the adverts were "offensive".

The campaign is designed to highlight the fact that babies born into poverty are more likely to grow up to be addicted to alcohol and drugs, become victims and perpetrators of crime and to be homeless.

Figures from the Department of Work and Pensions show one in three children in Britain lives in a family which survives below the poverty line of £242 a week.

Andrew Nebel, the director of marketing and communications at Barnardo's, defended the adverts. He said: "They are deliberately attention-seeking. We deal in shocking issues so if we talk about our work it is going to be seen as controversial.

"That means breaking through some of the complacency when it comes to child poverty because large numbers of people don't know it exists at the level it does."

Cockroach advert banned by industry watchdog wins place in year's top 10

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/cockroach-advert-banned-by-industry-watchdog-wins-place-in-years-top-10-578123.html

By Terry Kirby, Chief Reporter
Wednesday, 31 December 2003

An advertising campaign for Barnardo's which was banned by watchdogs has been voted among the best this year by the industry.

An advertising campaign for Barnardo's which was banned by watchdogs has been voted among the best this year by the industry.

The adverts for the children's charity, which included a computer-generated photograph of a newborn baby with a cockroach crawling out of his mouth, provoked 466 complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) - the highest number this year.

The authority upheld the complaints, saying the pre-Christmas campaign could "cause serious or widespread offence". Barnardo's was ordered not to repeat the adverts.

Now Campaign magazine has voted the campaign created by Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) No 6 in a list of the year's top 10.

It said: "Any campaign tackling child poverty needs to be thought-provoking and BBH came up with the goods for Barnardo's." The wording on the cockroach advertisement said: "Baby Greg is one minute old. He should have a bright future. Poverty is waiting to rob Greg of hope and spirit and is likely to lead him to a future of squalor."

Other adverts in the series included a baby with a syringe in her mouth - a warning that childhood poverty could lead to drug abuse - and a baby with a meths bottle in her mouth - a message about alcoholism.

Before the campaign was launched, the charity had it vetted by the Committee of Advertising Practice, which drew up the ASA's code. Barnardo's said that the committee had raised no objections.

A spokeswoman for the charity said yesterday: "We gain nothing from this type of recognition apart from knowing we were working with a very professional agency."

Campaign's accolade for best advert of the year was given to Land Rover for a poster featuring Masai tribesmen and children standing in the shape of its Freelander model. Campaign said: "Yet again, Land Rover has delivered what is arguably this year's best piece of aspirational car advertising."

"Barnardo's cockroach adverts banned"

From The Independent. By Martin Hickman

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/barnardos-cockroach-adverts-banned-576199.html

Wednesday, 10 December 2003

An advertising campaign for the children's charity Barnardo's, showing cockroaches crawling out of the mouths of new-born babies, has been banned following a record number of complaints.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that Barnardo's used "shocking images" in its campaign and ordered them to be withdrawn.

Three adverts depicted babies' mouths filled with a cockroach, a syringe and a bottle of methylated spirits, with the slogan: "There are no silver spoons for children born into poverty".

Barnardo's defended the campaign as a stark portrayal of the wickedness of poverty. It said the pictures also demonstrated the often distressing nature of its work. But newspaper readers were upset by the computer-enhanced images and 466 complained to the ASA, the highest number this year.

Complainants said the adverts were "offensive, shocking and unduly distressing". Some suggested the adverts could encourage children to copy the images.

Barnardo's compared the campaign to hard-hitting adverts for road safety or anti-smoking which "caused distress for good reason."

In its ruling, the ASA said that children were unlikely to copy the adverts. But it decided that the campaign had broken the advertising code of practice because it could "cause serious or widespread offence."

Diana Green, Barnardo's director of communications, said the charity would abide by the watchdog's recommendations but it did not agree with them.

"We make no apologies because we have raised the debate of child poverty," she said.

Guardian Article "Wit and imagination deliver the biggest shock of all"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V-zxWY3vsY&feature=related

By Joshua Blackburn, Wednesday 8 November 2006 00.07 GMT

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about at all, quipped Oscar Wilde. The charity sector knows all about that. Following distressing news that 2005's list of the most complained about advertising was charity-free, pundits were left asking how the sector had become so shockingly unshocking.

Controversy has long been a handy tool for charity campaigners, whether with a bag full of dead kittens or a baby with a cockroach in its mouth. Barnardos, Peta, NSPCC, BHF and many others have all sought to shock the public into action, and the Advertising Standards Authority (Asa) lists charity campaigns as some of the most controversial it has dealt with. In their efforts to create the biggest splash, charities have developed a hard-hitting approach that is at times gruesome, offensive, violent or disturbing - but always impossible to ignore.

The problem with shock is that it is subject to the law of diminishing returns. The more you do it, the more predictable it becomes. The last few years have therefore seen charities almost trying to outdo each other. The British Heart Foundation had fat dripping from arteries, Rethink put Churchill into a straightjacket, Fathers4Justice has shocked its way into the headlines and Barnardos has become a national institution for controversy. It almost appeared that the measure of campaign success was how many complaints the Asa received.

Perhaps this is not surprising. When a campaign hits the headlines, it generates free media and public debate. Many charity issues are in themselves controversial, so how better to cut through apathy and ignorance than with a campaign that pulls no punches. If Mrs Outraged from Cleethorps is left spluttering over her breakfast cereal, then so be it. The danger, however, is when campaigns become predictably controversial, assaulting the public with disturbing images that, paradoxically, shock us into apathy, not action.

Debate over whether the sector is becoming more cautious is, however, a red herring. The real question is whether these tactics even work. The case study of traditional shock campaigns is fairly straightforward: assault your public with the mental equivalent of a frying pan. This has certainly been effective in the past, but the evidence is that, after a while, the public learns to duck. Mailings go unopened, ads go unwatched and controversy ends up backfiring.

Until recently, the answer was to bring out ever bigger frying pans but now, without wishing to push the kitchen metaphor too far, one wonders if we need a new range of utensils.

On its own, shock is fairly one-dimensional. But when combined with intrigue, humour and seduction, when the viewer is left wanting to find out more rather than turn away, charities succeed in getting people thinking. Amnesty's "Guns for Sale" campaign, Greenpeace's film targeting SUV drivers, and the Prostate Cancer Charity's radio spots with Ricky Gervais are all examples of campaigns driven by humour and surprise, each of which has created a more good-natured controversy. They are also campaigns whose success has gone viral, a product of the YouTube generation where the public helps get the message out in a flurry of forwarded emails.

This new dynamic reflects a more interesting and creative approach to capturing the public's attention. Charities must still know how to press the shock button, but they must understand that it doesn't take long before this alone becomes rather tedious. The issue is not whether charities should be more cautious but how they can keep up with a shock-worn public that, quite literally, has seen it all. The answer is not to keep turning up the voltage but to bring greater imagination, wit and intelligence to their campaigns.

Joshua Blackburn is creative director at the charity communications agency Provokateur (www.provokateur.com)

Barnardos. Heroin Baby.

By Bartle Bogle Hegarty.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2002/dec/03/advertising.society

Nebel says: "My basic mission was to help make Barnardo's stand out in a crowded market and explain the enormous range of support and help it gives to desperate families.
"Our mission was to rebrand Barnardo's and tell people that it was no longer about orphanages. Every year Barnardo's helps 115,000 underprivileged children.
"I believe the charity's willingness to embrace modern marketing and fundraising methods has been an invaluable part in the Barnardo's success story."


An exert from the Guardian article "Barnardo's wins top ad prize" by Claire Cozens
Tuesday 3 December 2002 15.03 GMT

An earlier ad, featuring a baby injecting heroin, was banned by the advertising standards authority. But the charity capitalised on the setback by commissioning a new "happy baby" image, captioned, "The ad we wish we could have run".

Barnardos. Silver Spoons.

By Bartle Bogle Hegarty.


Article from The Guardian by Claire Cozens
Wednesday 12 November 2003 14.01 GMT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2003/nov/12/childrensservices.advertising1

Dozens of people have contacted the advertising watchdog to complain about Barnardo's new campaign just hours after the shock image of a newborn baby with a cockroach in its mouth first appeared.

The Advertising Standards Authority said it had already received 30 complaints about the advert, which appeared in some tabloid newspapers this morning.
It showed a full-page image of a newborn baby with a hospital tag around its wrist and a large cockroach crawling out of its mouth. The strapline read, "There are no silver spoons for children born into poverty".
Other ads in the campaign feature a baby with a syringe, and one with a bottle of methylated spirits poking out of its mouth.

The children's charity has a history of courting controversy, most famously when it used images of a 10-month-old baby injecting heroin in a press campaign.
The Committee on Advertising Practice, which advises advertisers on the industry's code of conduct, took the rare step of writing to newspaper editors to advise them the image could contravene its taste and decency guidelines.

But Andrew Nebel, the director of marketing and communications for Barnardo's, insisted the charity's shock tactics were justified and said it had worked closely with the regulator in preparing its campaign.

"Barnardo's work involves dealing with shocking issues. This latest campaign in particular deals with child poverty, which the public is almost in denial about. We needed to overcome public apathy about poverty in Britain," he said.

"We don't have much money to spend, so we are looking for high levels of awareness from a relatively small campaign."

Mr Nebel said some complaints were inevitable and compared the strategy to "Bob Geldof's famous four-letter exhortation", which galvanised the public into action over the famine in Ethiopia.
The last Barnardo's campaign, which showed images of adult suicides and tragic deaths with the line "saving children from a living death", attracted around 20 complaints but was cleared by the ASA.

The latest campaign is aimed at raising awareness of child poverty and coincides with new government figures showing one in three children in Britain, and nearly half of all London children, now live in poverty.

Daily Mail article on NHS ads.

The gist of piece found in the Daily Mail about the "shocking" anti smoking fish hook ads. I wish I knew which ad agency came up with it.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-455106/Anti-smoking-advert-frightening.html

Anti-smoking advert 'is too frightening' By SEAN POULTER Last updated at 20:24 15 May 2007

A health campaign which showed smokers being snatched by fish hooks in their mouths has been criticised for frightening children. The Advertising Standards Authority received 744 complaints about the Department of Health TV commercials and posters. A TV advert showed a woman folding clothes while a child watched TV. The next second the woman was dragged from the room by a fish hook attached to a wire.

The advertisements and posters for the Department of Health campaign are said to have shocked and frightened children.

A man walking down a street was also seen being dragged along the ground and over a car bonnet by a hook and wire into a shop selling cigarettes. The aim was to demonstrate the addiction to tobacco and highlight a Government campaign to help smokers kick the habit.
A series of billboard posters showed smokers with pained expressions and a taught wire pulling on hooks embedded above their lips.

The campaign attracted the highest number of complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority for two years. Today, the authority criticises the handling of the Government-health initiative.
The official watchdog said most of those who complained considered the images were "offensive, frightening and distressing", particularly to children.

It ruled that the commercials cannot be shown during children or family viewing times. It seems the posters will be banned outright.

The Department of Health said the adverts were designed to confront smokers with the controlling nature of their addiction and were not meant merely to attract attention or to be gratuitous.