Christian Aid goes forth and multiplies
Howard Lake | 16 May 2005 | News
Christian Aid’s new advertising campaign for this year’s Christian Aid Week aims to challenge the traditional style of Third World charity advertising.
Under the strapline ‘You add, we multiply’, the advertising campaign uses humour, handwritten typeface, child-like illustrations and soft colours to engage audiences. Christian Aid is aiming to demonstrate that it invests donations in long-term solutions to poverty rather than just short-term handouts.
Christian Aid Week is the charity’s major annual fundraising drive and runs from 15 to 21 May 2005. Last year, £14.7 million was raised during the week to support the charity’s work in more than 50 of the world’s poorest countries.
Advertisement
More than seven million people get involved in Christian Aid Week each year including 350,000 volunteers who take part in door-to-door collections.
One example used in this year’s campaign is chickens: they provide eggs as food and income but also reproduce to create more chickens, all of which help people to be self-sufficient and reduce their reliance on aid.
Jeff Dale, Head of Marketing at Christian Aid said: “We wanted to move away from the traditional images which, while often shocking, have become generic and lost impact.
“Humour is an effective way of grabbing attention particularly amongst many people who might otherwise just look away. The communication may be funny but the message is a serious one about the best way to combat global poverty.”
The campaign was created by advertising agency Campbell Doyle Dye and will run on television, radio, press and online.
The television ads were made by the production company Godman and directed by Tim Kirkby, the same team that produced the BBC spoof science series ‘Look Around You’.
The ads follow a similar style to the programmes with a series of ‘scientific’ experiments comparing things that multiply and things that don’t.
The print ads use a simple strip of graphics to illustrate that the money collected during Christian Aid Week is invested in things that multiply. One of the print ads features the strapline: ‘We go forth and multiply.’
The strapline ‘You add, we multiply’ along with chicken examples is also used as part of an integrated campaign in church materials, on the charity’s website, on the Christian Aid Week red envelopes for donations, and it will be used in millions of direct marketing messages after Christian Aid Week.
The Christian Aid Week website includes an amusing interactive virtual Big Cow Farm which illustrates the benefits that one cow can bring a family.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.