Advertising Q and A for students
- What do you hope to gain through your advertising?
- How has your advertising evolved over the past 15 years?
- How successful is your TV advertising?
- Who is Barnardo's target audience?
- Why have you not used real service users in your advertising campaign?
- How do you select models for your advertising campaigns?
- How much did you spend on advertising?
- Why do you spend money on advertising and not invest that money into directly helping children?
- Why do you choose to advertise on TV and how do you decide which TV channel/programmes to advertise on?
- How long have you worked with the advertising agency BBH?
- When working with BBH what is involved in the strategic process in order to reach the final product?
- What do you say to people who argue that Barnardo’s advertising campaigns can be too shocking?
- Are there concerns that these advertisements may have had the reverse effect and discouraged consumers to become donors?
- Are you not worried that your advertising campaigns may distress children who have been involved in similar situations?
1. What do you hope to gain through your advertising?
The main objective of our advertising is to establish and build brand awareness in the public domain, drive the public’s affinity with our brand, and to strengthen our case for public support.
2. How has your advertising evolved over the past 15 years?
The 1990s was a challenging time for Barnardo's as there was a general lack of clarity and understanding of our brand and work. We have a very small marketing budget in comparison with other organisations, including other charities, so we need to use strategies that will make an impact and raise awareness of who we are and what we do. During this period, our press advertising campaigns used visually shocking metaphors to draw attention to the issues facing vulnerable children and young people, and our work to counter this. These campaigns enabled us to successfully raise awareness of Barnardo’s and we received a great deal of valuable PR coverage.
More recently, we needed to create a step change in the awareness of Barnardo’s, and used TV advertising to help us achieve this. The aim of the Break the Cycle campaign (2008) continued to be around raising awareness of Barnardo's and our work, but also to promote why we do this. As our strapline suggests, it is because we as individuals and as an organisation “Believe in children”. We wanted to show how many children and young people are caught up in the cycle of deprivation and how our work can break this cycle. During the campaign we received a lot of PR coverage and our spontaneous awareness increased, but we found that not everyone understood Barnardo's role the story of the young girl in the advert.
We realised then how important it was to make clear our role in helping children and young people in our advertising. This then became part of our brief to our advertising agency, BBH, who worked with us to produce our Turn Around campaign (2009-2011). This advert clearly illustrates our role and shows how Barnardo's makes a difference to children and helps turn their lives around.
We hope this in turn will create an affinity with us amongst our target audience and will lead them to see us as deserving charity. As they gain a better understanding of who we are and what we do, they are more likely to support our work. This is reflected in our current advertising strategies and TV advertising.
3. How successful is your TV advertising?
Since we began TV advertising in 2008 our spontaneous awareness levels have increased significantly amongst the public. We have also seen an increase in the recognition of our strap line ‘Believe in children’, an increase in awareness of us being a charity which helps children, and an increase in the likelihood to donate to Barnardo’s.
4. Who is Barnardo's target audience?
Barnardo's has an incredibly diverse range of target groups both within and outside the organisation, e.g. staff, volunteers and donors. The primary target audience for our advertising campaign are those members of the general public who are most likely to donate to children’s charities.
Certain areas of our work will focus on different target groups. For example, our family placement communications mainly target local authorities, who fund our services, and potential adoptive and foster carers. TV advertising campaigns, however, target a wider national audience to raise awareness and strengthen public support.
Our TV advertising specifically targets ABC1s between the ages of 25 and 54. We know that this group have high levels of disposable incomes and have significant potential value to us as donors.
We have analysed our audience to ensure that our message is relevant to them, and will feature in media that will reach them when they are at their most receptive.
Barnardo's works with a number of research agencies to find out what the general population, and our target audience, know and feel about charities, Barnardo's and our work. They conduct quarterly research on our behalf, as well as pre and post-campaign research to measure people’s awareness of Barnardo’s and our work as well as how many people claim to have seen the advert, and how the advert affected their perception of Barnardo's.
5. Why have you not used real service users in your advertising campaign?
Shooting the advert required the young actress to portray emotional scenes in a compelling and empathetic manner. Coupled with the sensitivity of the subject areas featured, we felt it was most responsible to use a professional actress.
We wanted the content of the advert and the dialogue to be as true to life as possible. To ensure the accuracy of the content, we worked closely with key children’s service managers.
6. How do you select models for your advertising campaigns
When selecting models for our advertising campaigns, we brief our advertising agency BBH who source the models. We then attend the castings and select the model which best suits the script and creative idea and who is able to portray the story in a compelling way.
7. How much did you spend on advertising?
In the financial year 10/11, we did not spend any money on production of an advert, as we continues to run our Turn Around advert which we had produced the year before. We invested the money we would have spent on production into buying air time. In total we spent just over £1 million on air time.
8. Why do you spend money on advertising and not invest that money into directly helping children?
We always try to spend our money as responsibly and effectively as possible, and as a charity we are offered favourable rates on the production costs for the advertising.
The money spent on advertising helps push us to the front of people’s minds and increases their sense of our deservedness as a charity. A strong brand presence is critical to our ability to win and retain donated funds to continue our vital work with children and young people.
The money spent on advertising has not affected the fact that 94p in every pound* donated to Barnardo’s still goes directly to the children and young people we work with.
* Excluding trading and property development costs.
9. Why do you choose to advertise on TV and how do you decide which TV channel/programmes to advertise on?
We work with a media buying agency, John Ayling and Associates, which helps us buy media space in the most cost-effective way, whilst helping us reach our brand objectives.
Our advertising appears on channels and between programmes that appealed to our primary target audience. These have been selected based on both viewing figures and core audience. For example, we chose to appear on some programmes because they are high-ratings programmes in terms of audience viewing figures. Other programmes, such as documentaries, have been chosen due to their appeal to our core target audience (ABC1, 25 to 54 years old) who are most likely to support us.
10. How long have you worked with the advertising agency BBH?
BBH has been developing our advertising for more than ten years and has a strong understanding of our organisation and work.
11. When working with BBH what is involved in the strategic process in order to reach the final product?
When working on a new project, we begin by briefing BBH with our brand objectives and what we’re trying to achieve. BBH comes back to us with questions about our brief and we discuss further details, such as budget and timescales. We then work with BBH to agree on a strategy, for example, whether to use existing or new creative, and whether to use TV advertising or other mediums, such as PR, online, internal teams and/or integrating activity. BBH will then pitch the creative ideas to us and we choose the one we feel will be most effective. Throughout the whole process we work closely with BBH and decide together on all stages including script, sourcing a director and casting.
As the advert is being created, we also work with our media buying agency, John Aylings and Associates, and agree on channels, programming, and timings. Once everything has been agreed on by both BBH and our media buying agency, and we are happy with the creative, the TV advert airs.
12. What do you say to people who argue that Barnardo’s advertising campaigns can be too shocking?
Unfortunately, the elements of our advertising that may seem disturbing to some people are everyday occurrences for many of the children and young people we work with. While we realise that this is hard to see, we feel it is important to reflect the true experiences of our service users, so that people understand that this is the sad reality for many children in the UK. We need to raise awareness of this, to prevent this happening to more children and young people.
Although we do recognise our advertising can be hard-hitting, in no way is it intended to cause offence or distress. Instead, we want people to recognise that with intervention through organisations such as Barnardo’s, things can change.
13. Are there concerns that these advertisements may have had the reverse effect and discouraged consumers to become donors?
Possibly, but this is very difficult to measure. While it is true we do receive some complaints, comparatively we also received a great deal of support for the campaign, both from the public and other professionals.
We have been extremely pleased with the outcome of our recent advertising campaigns. We have achieved a significant increase in spontaneous awareness of Barnardo’s and have successfully achieved our main objectives.
During our TV campaigns, we see increased visits to our website, meaning people have been prompted by our adverts to find out more about who we are and how we turn around the lives of many children and young people in the UK.
14. Are you not worried that your advertising campaigns may distress children who have been involved in similar situations?
The last thing we want is to distress or upset vulnerable children and young people. Our intention is to highlight such issues and demonstrate that Barnardo’s can help children who find themselves in such situations. Only by doing this will we achieve the public support that will enable us to continue our work, prevent abuse and support those it does affect.
We have been responsible in seeking advice about how to deal with such callers, and have compiled a list of organisations that can support people through these issues. These are:
- Barnardo's, visit Turn Around Support Services for a full list of Barnardo’s sexual exploitation and missing services
- NAPAC (National Association of People Abused in Childhood) 0800 085 3330
- Samaritans 0845 790 9090.