Charity advertising and differences between genders....

Differences between genders are not difficult to recognize. It is obvious that we look different and our brains work in other ways. Women pay attention for details, however men for general idea. It has a big impact on our behaviour and it is important for advertising agencies workers whose aim is to grab our attention. The same situation is with charity advertising. It is even more difficult to create advert which is easy to remember and which not disappear in modern media such as TV and magazines. Everyone knows that it is much more difficult to persuade people spend their money when they do not get a bought product. The article explains the process of changes in charity advertising

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2001/mar/14/charities

That’s why charity advertising are often based on people’s emotions and threats. Recipients want to help because they afraid that similar situation can happen to them. According to

http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/codes/radio_code/Radio+Code+Charity+Advertising.htm

website:

Advertisements for charities must:

a) handle with care and discretion matters likely to arouse strong emotions in the audience;

b) not suggest that anyone will lack proper feeling or fail in any responsibility through not supporting a charity;

c) respect the dignity of those on whose behalf an appeal is being made;

d) not address any fundraising message specifically to children;

e) not contain comparisons with other charities;

f) avoid presenting an exaggerated impression of the scale or nature of the social problem to which the work of the charity is addressed, eg. by illustrating the message with non-typical extreme examples;

g) not misrepresent or mislead in any way about the charity, its field of activity or the use to which donations will be put.

Unfortunately, there are a few cases when this rules were not obeyed. At

http://www.charitytimes.com/

website we can find a few examples of such controversial charity campaigns:

2002: British Heart Foundation’s “plastic bag” press ads caused concern for children’s safety, attracting 315 complaints – the most that year. The complaints were upheld.

Unison failed to substantiate the implication in its advert that care home places had been lost due to the greed of private sector operators. Complaints by 140 people and businesses were upheld.

2003: Barnardo’s’ “silver spoons” press campaign in depicting babies with cockroaches or syringes in their mouths attracted 475 complaints. Complaints that the ads were offensive were upheld.

2004: British Heart Foundation’s “fatty cigarette” TV adverts in which fat spilled out of cigarettes, signifying the damage smoking does to arteries attracted 92 complaints, but Ofcom (which regulated television advertising at the time) decided the importance of the message outweighed the objections. Not upheld. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ef3gofQcOKk

Coming back to differences between genders. Schiebe and Condry (1984) were very interested in that topic. They examined advertisements according to product type and found major gender differences in the values promoted in advertisements. What was the result of their examination?

For women:

• ads often are more detailed. e.g. toiletry ads.
• women appreciate very fine distinctions, such as 5 different variations of shampoo-for curly hair, straight hair, oily hair, dry hair, etc.

For men:

• Toiletry ads focus on a single product.
• Men are likely to pick up on one or two very salient and obvious kinds of cues. (Free)
• Men think in a more macro way, and need to be shown the big picture.
• Men are less likely to process complex metaphors.

Examples (what is interesting, these are ads produced by the same company. First one is for females second one is for males.) Can you see the difference?