# Can charities afford originality?

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2012/05/28/can-charities-afford-originality/
- Published: 2012-05-28T15:27:54+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

![](https://www.fundraising.co.uk/files/images/news/centrepoint_ymca_adverts_0.jpg)

There are moments in life when you experience a profound culture clash. I can still
remember the one that told me working in the charity sector was going to be ‘different’.

It was my first week at a sector-specific agency, and I was getting acquainted with
a client’s existing work – a well-known animal welfare charity. Someone showed me
their upgrade mailing and I was stunned into silence.

I reached under the desk to find my portfolio, opened it, and pulled out an upgrade
mailing I’d worked on a couple of years previously for an international development
charity. It was exactly the same. Not similar. The same. Where I’d written ‘children’,
the animal charity had substituted ‘animals’. Apart from that, the copy was word-
for-word the same. The format was the same. The design was the same (just swapping
the colours, logo and imagery).

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I’d just come from a world where this kind of thing would have caused a major scandal.
In mainstream creative agencies, originality is prized above all else. Not only 
would you never copy anyone else’s idea, you’d reject work you’d arrived at that
was similar to someone else’s. Any agency or individual seen as a plagiarist would
do serious and lasting damage to their reputation.

The question is, should charities behave the same way? Well, as the example above
shows, clearly they don’t.

And perhaps with good reason.

Direct marketing science says, to achieve the best results, duplicate something 
that’s worked previously. Would donors rather the charity spent its hard-earned 
funds on coming up with new ideas, or on marketing that raises the most money for
the least expenditure?

Freud says dreams are underlying content sparked into life by topical events – and
the topical event in this case is the YMCA room sponsorship press ad that is a very
close homage to Centrepoint’s (many of which have been produced by this agency, 
including this very successful and award-winning example).

Fair enough? Good practise in action? I’d like to know your thoughts.

Before you comment, however , it’s worth considering the irony that [Centrepoint](http://www.centrepointroom.org.uk)
and the [YMCA](http://www.roomsponsor.org.uk) both have ‘room sponsorship’ schemes,
and that YMCA claim theirs was first. What price originality?

_Reuben Turner is Creative Director at [The Good Agency](http://www.thegoodagency.co.uk)_

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