Since posting the inaugural Friday Fundraisers' quiz question, I've been wondering just how brave/outspoken I'll be when giving the answer. I'm still not sure, but here goes:
There is, as several tweets have suggested, more than one 'fundraising truth' which seem to have been disregarded when coming up with both of these adverts. Many things surprised me about them, but there was one thing I just kept shaking my head at - the donation forms.
Making response as easy as possible is a basic in fundraising. When an advert is placed on the left hand side of the spread (as Save the Children's is), the coupon should be placed on the left hand side so that it can be cut or torn out with two cuts or tears (one up and one across). I realise that the scan, which you can see again below, makes it hard to see the placement, but you can just see the fold of the paper running down the right hand side of the image.
Oxfam's wasn't placed on the edge, but clearly goes out of its way to make cutting out the response device difficult with four cuts in total. Now I've a feeling that the person/people selling in this idea will have said the cut is integral to their clever creative idea, but (and here's the brave/foolish outspoken bit) it's a bad idea anyway. And I think it's fair to say that both of these adverts fly in the face of a great deal of fundraising common sense.
Here's a few other points that people have mentioned:
Save the Children - It's powerful subject matter, but there's no eye contact in the image, the child pictured isn't named (missing out on any connection with her) and an uninvolving headline doesn't help.
Oxfam - This must be part of a test, as it seems their tv ads are back on track (See here). But I find it hard to understand why anyone would respond to an advert that asks a donor for a commitment, yet does so little to meet their needs. (Click here for more on donor needs.)
Both adverts feature Haiti, but neither tackles a key barrier to giving, which is 'I've already given to Haiti'.
One more thing to note: these adverts were actually placed back to back. So if you respond to Oxfam's ad, you'll have a Save the Children donation form on the back and vice versa. There's no way of responding to both unless you have a photocopier to hand. That's probably not the charity's fault, but I'd say the newspaper has a few questions to answer.
Finally, the best way to judge these adverts is on their response, which I don't have access to. If anyone would like to share the results, that would be great, but for now I'll just wish both charities luck with these campaigns.
