Reactions to Charity Print Campaigns

I looked for examples of charity adverts that promoted the same or similar charities through guilt and/or fear in different ways and ran a survey asking people which ones made them feel guiltiest or most frightened and why.

I chose these adverts to test colour images against black and white images. 70% of the people who answered my survey said the left advert was most effective, with the reason being the brutal imagery. One of the people who thought the right image was most effective thought so because of the ghostly image. 

Conclusion: People chose the left image because of the content of it, which doesn't really help me. Someone said that the ghostly look of the right image was effective, which is useful, but these responses showed that the content of the image was more important than the styling of the image.

These adverts were chosen to test the influence of celebrity endorsement. I researched the woman in the left advert to check she wasn't a celebrity, and it turns out she was the actress for Will Smiths girlfriend in the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. I wouldn't class this as celebrity as such, especially compared to Pamela Anderson. 85% of my answers said they thought the right image was most effective because it's easily and instantly understood.

Conclusion: The reasons for it being more effective are unrelated to the people in the adverts, so in that sense it wouldn't seem like it makes little difference.

I chose these to test if leading questions were more effective than statements or key words. The response to this was split 55%:45% in favour of the top one, with reasons being that it was thought-provoking and it felt quite dark. People that thought the bottom one was most effective referenced the sad look on the dogs face.

Conclusion: Based on the fact that no-one who thought the bottom one was most effective mentioned the text in any way, whereas some people mentioned how the top advert made them think, I would suggest leading questions are more useful that statements.

These adverts were testing how the amount of text affects the effectiveness of a guilt/fear campaign. 85% Thought the bottom one was most effective, one of the reasons given was that "less text makes me think more", which is pretty perfect feedback. The reason given by a person who thought the top one was more effective was that the eyes that made them feel guilty.

Conclusion: Less text is better because it's the images that make people think. The people that thought the top one was more effective thought so because of the content of the image, not the text.

This was to test if verbal arguments were more effective than statistical arguments. Everyone who answered my survey thought the bottom one was more effective because of the way it humanises a problem, and it was much clearer than the top one.

Conclusion: If you have statistics, use them.