The internet has been marred by plenty of charity and poverty campaigns. The accessibility of internet has made a lot of people to come across poverty adverts persuading them to contribute towards saving a certain group of people or community. These kinds of campaigns are also known as emotive advertising. Poverty campaigns are unique as they solely use emotional appeal in order convince people to donate. They will use sympathetic images revealing the gross nature of the beneficiaries and how the donation will improve their circumstances (Bendtsen, 2015). However, emotive charity advertising has been under serious criticism on whether it is the most effective solution to eradicating poverty. This is because donations do not help much in improving the overall lives of the affected individuals. Furthermore, poverty ads have been noted to violate the Dochas codes of conduct. This is because it has been exaggerating its images to influence viewers on donating. This paper aims to investigate how poverty ads make people feel and how they influence them to donate money to their programs. The second part of this paper will define the significance of this study. This is very important because there is a limited study on this particular topic. Hence, this part will tackle the important aspects of this study concerning poverty ads. The final section of the paper is the literature review. This is the main part which will expound on the entire topic of poverty adverts and their influence on people. It is important to understand what techniques charity organizations incorporate to influence people to contribute their money. Poverty adverts have become more popular today, and this is as a result of their unique emotional appeal.
Significance of the study
Advertising is one of the most crucial elements of increasing awareness to people. It is a type of marketing which is targeted to influence the target audience to take action. Advertisements provide useful information about a given product, service or program. At the end of it all, adverts will demand a call to action to be taken by the reader, viewer or consumer. This is very similar to poverty adverts whose aim is to convince individuals to donate money for a worthy course. The study has decided to delve deeper and examine how poverty ads make people feel and the techniques they use to influence individuals to donate money or any other resources. Charity or poverty adverts have become more common in the modern world. It is very rare not to come across a poverty ad while surfing the internet, reading a newspaper or watching television (Isaac, 2016). Therefore, this study plays a crucial role in shedding light on emotive charity advertising. This is an area which has little research available thus making this paper very important. Poverty adverts are emotive because they are structured to influence the sympathetic emotions of an individual. Hence, emotions are their main target while looking for people to donate towards their programs.
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It is vital to understand why emotions are becoming a major aspect of poverty ads. In general advertising, businesses use emotional appeal to get connected to their target market. This connection translates to increased sales, huge customer base, and high profits. Studies on advertising have revealed that emotional response to an advert is more powerful in influencing an individual to purchase or donate more than the content of the advert (). This shows that emotions play a big part in influencing someone to take actions. Poverty ads have borrowed certain philosophies from commercial marketing to enhance their donations. Charity organizations use a lot of emotional images in their poverty adverts to capture the emotions of the viewer or reader. They understand that people act as a result of their emotions. Hence, evoking emotions is the most effective way poverty ads can make a lot of donations towards their programs or projects.
The need for validation is one of the emotional states which is likely to influence a person to donate towards a poverty advert. Such people do not want to be skeptical about their choices, thus they will click on the link and read more information on the company’s website. When they find that it is legit, the chances are that they will donate. Sympathy is another emotion that is utilized effectively by poverty ads because it has more influence in donations (Hornik & Miniero, 2010). People who feel sorry for other people because of their current situations will donate money to help them. Poverty ads use very emotional pictures of starving children and helpless mothers to evoke sympathy and consideration among the readers or viewers (Isaac, 2016). Such pictures can drive tears and strong emotion which eventually leads to donation.
This study also focuses on whether poverty ads do follow ethical codes of conduct. There are various ethical codes which provide a framework which guides any form of public communication. Understanding the codes of conduct is important in assessing poverty adverts. Codes of conduct are also vital in providing an overview guideline of ethical advertising. It will help the reader to be more careful and make informed decisions when planning to contribute to a poverty advert. Certain poverty ads have been reported to represent a false reality of existing circumstances to influence people to donate more money (Bendtsen, 2015). Therefore, the paper will shed light on such issues which will be a benchmark for evaluating poverty ads.
Literature review
It has become evident enough poverty ads have become more paramount in all platforms that humans use. It is possible that everyday individuals come across several poverty ads on the internet, supermarkets, television, social media, and newspapers, among many others. The main aim of these ads is to persuade and convince people to donate money for a worthy course. They are also known as charity adverts. Eradicating poverty and famine are the most commonly used reasons. Poverty ads make people feel sympathetic by using emotional pictures of the beneficiaries (Dong-Jenn et al. 2010). This is because emotional or controversial images have serious impacts on the targeted people. They are likely to resonate with the people facing the given plight and eventually donate money. Charity advertising distinguishes itself from other forms of advertising (Rettie et al. 2010). It is mainly because that it has one intention which is to persuade people to donate money to facilitate a given course.
Charity organizations who come up with poverty ads usually conduct a lot of extensive research on the impacts of the ad to the intended people. This is because the success of the program relies on the effect of the advert. This helps them to modify and even exaggerate the effects of poverty on the children. This technique is mainly used to evoke empathetic emotions among the targeted audience thus contributing to the donation. Charity organizations strive to tailor the advert in such a way that it relates to the target audience to a great extent (Hornik & Miniero, 2010). An image of hunger-stricken and very thin children will prompt a lot of individuals to donate as they see that they will be helping certain children to avoid poverty and eat healthily. However, these children could have been digitally modified to have a major impact on the donators. This appears to be an unethical practice which has not been scrutinized effectively. They create disturbing material to persuade people to donate to a poverty advert. The image in the entire advert is the most important aspect that needs a lot of attention (Sadeghi et al. 2015). This is because it carries the overall impact of the information. In addition, to the images, the text has also been used in the advert to develop the call to action of the reader.
Poverty ads are unique because they are personalized to the target individuals. Therefore, the text is structured with personal pronouns thus appearing as if the ad it directly talking to the reader. This has a huge impact which mostly influences the reader to click on the advert and donate money. The text is also tailored in an imperative form which persuades the reader to take action. For instance, a poverty advert will use command phrases such as “donate and save lives now,” “call now,” “don’t let a child die if you see this,” and many more. The use of emotional image and enticing text are effective techniques that will induce emotions such as sympathy, compassion, empathy, concern, and pity. These kinds of emotions are very responsive and will influence the decision of the reader to donate money (Grigliunaite & Pileliene, 2016). Poverty ads are developed to make people feel sorry for the beneficiaries of their donations. They will strive to use any meaningful and striking technique to attack the reader’s emotions. Similarly to product marketing, the emotions of the target audience play an important role in influencing their response.
Poverty ads always appear on numerous websites on the internet. The internet has been mainly used because it has become the most populous platform for human traffic. Charity organizations have resorted to using new media technology to reach out to more people. When individual clicks on the poverty ad, they are redirected to the organization’s website where they find more information about the given course of the advert. This is one way of making the organization more popular as well as their advert. The increased traffic coming into their website is also very important as it increases the chances of donation. The website is also the same platform where individuals pay their donations online. Online paying has been well developed due to the advancement of the internet. A lot of businesses are operating online thus making online paying easier. Charity organizations have taken advantage of such innovations to also advance their agendas (Hornik & Miniero, 2010). Therefore, individuals can click on the ad and pay their donations on the organization’s website. This is very fast and efficient thus saving the user a lot of time compared to a print-based advertisement.
The print-based advertisement has been surpassed by electronic advertising which has been supported by the advancement of internet and technology. Advertisers are now able to incorporate moving images into their adverts to influence the viewers towards the call to action. The use of video technology in poverty ads has become effective because it sets the tone and mood of the information being presented (Panda & Mishra, 2013). This can grab the attention of the viewer, move his/her emotions and drive them to donate towards the poverty project or charity. The emotions of people are likely to be influenced by moving images in video rather than still images in newspapers. The mood of the video is more powerful to drive sympathy and pity (Lantos, 2015). Also, the use of video can incorporate plenty of various images which stress the main information of the advert. The use of still images is limited in offering variety and thus has little or no impact on one’s emotion. Moving images can also be able to tell the difficult stories of the beneficiaries which enhance clear understanding (Feiz et al. 2013). For instance, a poverty ad may capture the life of a young boy who struggles in life, eats once in two or three days, sleeps in open cold, has no parents and schooling. Such kind of a journey will drive the emotions of a lot of people and persuade them to donate money to help the boy and other children to get a good life.
Interestingly, charity organizations developing poverty adverts are very keen on timing. This is very important to understand when the target audience pockets are full. This will make it easier for them to donate to poverty programs. Placing a poverty ad during a financial recession would be absurd. This is because most people do not have adequate money to offer for donations let alone supporting their families. Therefore, timing is an important aspect of advertising (Grigliunaite & Pileliene, 2016). Poverty ads are likely to come during festivities such as Easter, Christmas, New Year, International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, World Aids Day, among other important occasions. This is because such events already have a prior impact on people. For instance, when people are commemorating the eradication of poverty, they already have prior emotions geared towards alleviating poverty. Therefore, most of the people who come across poverty ads are willing to donate to contribute towards poverty mitigation. Poverty ads will also pop around during Christmas and New Year celebrations because a lot of people have money and warm emotions (Rettie et al. 2010). Hence, they will not have a problem donating towards a poverty advert to save children or certain communities.
Various codes of conduct regulate the field of advertising. These codes act as guidelines upon which companies, businesses or organizations can design their adverts. The Dochas code of conduct creates a structure which acts as a references guide to organizations designing adverts or any public communication. The main principles of Dochas code of conduct include belief in equality of all people, observing the dignity of the involved people and accepting the need to uphold fairness and justice (Danaher, 2012). However, most poverty adverts have failed to observe certain Dochas codes. To start with, these ads incorporate images that are very sensitive and might even develop discriminatory attitudes towards the people involved. This is because poverty ads transform and exaggerate the effects of poverty to influence people to contribute to the donations (Du Plessis, 2008). These images are very disturbing and can develop discrimination against certain people or communities. People might start treating a given community with biased attitudes because of how people saw them in the advert. This creates inequality which is one of the main principles of the Dochas codes of conduct.
Poverty ads do not represent the reality of the existing situations truthfully. This is because they fear that very few people will donate towards their program if the images are not exaggerated. Therefore, they might modify the current reality to make it more demanding so that people can feel the urge to donate and change the given situation. However, people might be contributing towards a false reality. This is very unethical as it misleads public understanding of various people, communities or nation. Hence, most ads do not conform to Dochas codes of conduct because they are obsessed with how to influence the target audience to donate.
References
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