Sad sells. But is it time for charities to get happy?

It’s not a guilty secret

But there is a long-lived, rarely mentioned belief in charity sector advertising.

There’s not really a nice way to say it, so I won’t try:

Sad sells

For years marketing, communications and outreach in the charity sector have tended towards the downbeat.

It has been shown, time and again, that pictures of hungry children and scenes of neglected animals motivate people to put their hands in their pockets and make donations. It’s a reliable mechanism for doing what needs to be done.

This is, on the surface, a good thing. It means the contributors at home are exactly the compassionate, considerate and engaged individuals we know them to be. Their empathy, sense of connection, and feelings of duty are what enables the sector to make such a huge difference.

But I can’t help thinking...

We all know the last 12 months have been unlike anything we’ve experienced before. Many of us have discovered for the first time what it is to live with illness or uncertainty. We all learnt a lesson in how quickly life can change, and how distressing that can be.

So maybe there’s enough sadness in the world right now.

And maybe we shouldn’t be adding to it, no matter how good our intentions or how positive the outcome.

Something about those repeated images of children and families in crisis, or dogs and tigers in danger, is starting not to sit right with me.

Turning people into images or ideas, isolating them from their personhood - these sound like abstract problems. But they carry real risks.

Especially in recent years, the power of the spectacle to disrupt social norms is something those of us working in the media have had to take seriously.

Giving and Othering

There is a risk these campaigns can turn the object of the charity’s mission into the Other.

But we have all learnt that the Other is really just Us under different circumstances.

A different approach to charity ad creative can make us realise how close the Other is to ourselves.

There is a danger that by representing people as objects of pity, we stop seeing them as real people and active participants in their own recovery. And we know how important engagement and self-realisation are in anyone’s journey out of pain and poverty.

A different approach to charity ad messaging can turn your campaign itself into a tool for empowerment.

Campaigns should be platforms for sharing marginal voices, putting subaltern experiences in the spotlight, and broadening access out of distress and into something better.

Giving to forget

It’s not fair, of course, to call the established way of working ‘negative’. The benefits and the higher purpose are there to see.

But they do trade in negative emotions. When we are inspired to contribute after seeing scenes of people in distress, we are firstly helping ourselves. Seeing such images is a micro-trauma itself, and we put our hands in our pockets to make our own pain go away.

This dynamic is inherently transactional and short-term. We are buying our way out of feeling an important empathic response.

We are not buying into the charity’s underlying mission. We are not becoming active in our commitment to making change.

I know from working with charity clients that on certain channels other approaches are already cutting through. On Social, positive and playful content wins every time. And it’s often the start of a conversation, not the end - the first point of converting a one-off donor into a regular supporter or volunteer.

TV and out-of-home advertising works on a different emotional register - they feel different - so maybe switching tone in those formats is unsustainable.

But the impact journeys we can now track through connected TV and video experiences offer a better way of testing those assumptions.

Giving to remember

At this critical inflexion point, where charities are central to building the kind of world we want to see, we owe it to ourselves to find a better way.

Because if you want real engagement, you don’t give people something to forget about.

You give them something to believe in.

Let me know what you think.