"Read this you piece of shit". Saatchi & Saatchi

(17th Feb 2009.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2000/nov/09/voluntarysector18

How to get shock value for money

Nicola Hill speaks to Ed Jones, a creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide, about the use charities can make of advertising to further their cause.

• Nicola Hill
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 9 November 2000 10.49 GMT
• Article history

"Read this you piece of shit."

So ran an eye-catching advertisement run by Anti-Slavery International in 1995. It is also the image selected by Saatchi & Saatch to lure readers to its new book on social campaigning, Social Work.

"Shock is now considered an approach to be used with caution," says Ed Jones, a creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide. He warns of compassion fatigue but says using painful images is sometimes unavoidable. An example he draws on is Italy's Greenpeace ad, Women and Children First, which shows a baby's head hideously deformed as a result of his mother having been exposed to 'harmless' radiation fallout from earlier tests in Soviet Kazakhstan.

In contrast, he points to the recent adverts by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, (NSPCC) which depict children's icons, such as the Spice Girls and Alan Shearer, the footballer, shielding their eyes from painful events. "Using the viewers' imagination can be the most powerful tool possible," he says.

However, most charities cannot run to the advertising budget enjoyed by NSPCC. Jones says they should not be deterred. "Big ideas" he says, "can turn small budgets into powerful campaigns."

Jones cites the example of a London creative team who used a single poster to help ban .22 calibre handguns. After the massacre of schoolchildren in Dunblane, Scotland, parliament was introducing a law to ban certain firearms, but not .22 handguns. The team, with no money and no time, decided to act.

They discovered that Robert Kennedy had been assassinated with a .22 gun. Using a stock photograph of Kennedy, they had a poster printed to go on a lorry parked outside parliament on the day of the debate. "If a .22 handgun is less deadly," it asked, "why isn't he less dead?" An amendment was added to include the banning of .22 guns.

When money is tight, voluntary organisations that spend on advertising want a definite return on their investment. Jones says: "Decide on your objective and aim your message at powerful people. You need a spectacular advertisement which will get the issue on journalists' agendas."

However, Jones insists that social advertisements must be rigorously checked. "On any contentious issue, the smallest inaccuracy will be seized upon by opponents and used to discredit the argument."

Jones's advice overall is to be adventurous. "Your message has to be really powerful and life-transforming, otherwise you are wasting your money."

• Ed Jones joined Saatchi and Saatchi in London as a copywriter in 1984. From 1990 - 97 he was director of the Middle East region during the Gulf War and then moved on to be central and eastern Europe regional creative director. Since the beginning of 2000 he has been based in London as the creative director for Saatchi and Saatchi worldwide.

Saving children from a living death ???

I need to find out what this "saving children from a living death" campaign is.
It's the Barnardo's campaign that got complaints, but was cleared.
I think this might be important for my primary research?
I know that it is offensive, as people cared enough to complain to the ASA, but obviously did not offend enough (or breach any of the Advertising Codes) to be pulled.


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

An exert from an article from The Guardian:
Wednesday 12 November 2003 14.01 GMT

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.


Is this it?!

Verbal Abuse ads.

http://www.saatchi.com/worldwide/ideas_gallery.asp

Saatchi & Saatchi
Client/Product
Association of Women for Action & Research (AWARE)
"Verbal abuse can be just as horrific. But you don't have to suffer in silence..."


Maybe a lesser "hyped" yet still hard hitting ad would be a good way to go for my primary research?

Do I need to get people's initial reaction? Ie: are people desensitised to ads such as the Barnardos heroin baby, or alternatively, are people led to think that it is extremely controversial?

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.

How Barnardo's measure their success.

http://www.barnardos.org.uk/resources/resources_students_advertising.htm

How do you measure the success of your advertising?

Each year we commission an independent research agency to carry out qualitative research pre / post the launch of the advertising. This research involves a new sample of individuals each year which is representative of our target audience. They are each individually interviewed for approximately 30 minutes on a wide range of questions.

Many of the questions remain consistent so that we can measure the shift in responses so for example we can track:

• Awareness of Barnardo’s (both when people are asked about us specifically and when they are asked to name charities themselves at random)
• How deserving Barnardo’s is as a charity
• Awareness and thoughts about the work Barnardo’s does

'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."