WSPA develops template DRTV advert for emergency appeals
Howard Lake | 24 January 2007 | News
WSPA (the World Society for the Protection of Animals) has developed a new approach to emergency direct response TV (DRTV) appeals by create a template advert. This uses stock footage and can be adapted easily to any new natural or man-made emergencies, with a scrolling news ticker beneath giving the details of the current emergency.
Eighty per cent of the advert has already been created using existing footage showing the work that WSPA has done to help animals in past disasters, such as 2005’s Pakistan earthquake. But it can be adapted for each fresh emergency through a CNN-style rolling news strip running across the bottom of the screen that explains how WSPA is tackling the current crisis.
The 60-second advert has been created by Derek Humphries of THINK Consulting Solutions in partnership with Peter Muffett and Steve Walker of The DTV Group. It will be aired as necessary in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, at the same time as other pre-prepared emergency materials.
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Humphries explained the need for a template-based TV appeal. “One of the problems with emergency DRTV appeals”, he said, “is that the advert – like every other ad shown in this country – has to be cleared with the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre [BACC] and this takes time.
“But because we are using stock footage, this can be cleared in advance with the BACC. All that we then need to get approval for is the text for the rolling news bar, which is a much simpler matter.”
Amanda Seller, director of fundraising at WSPA, said: “This emergency advert will allow us to tell the story of the less well-known plight of animals affected; all too often, they are the forgotten victims of disasters.”
WSPA helped with a large number of emergencies during 2006, including flooding along the Danube, the Java earthquake, and flooding in western India.
As well as the emergency ad, THINK and the DTV Group have produced a new short-form, 60-second DRTV appeal advert for WSPA, which begins running in January 2007.
The ‘Eye-to-Eye’ advert takes as its premise that the eye is a window to the soul and asks viewers to look into the eye of an animal and understand its pain and suffering.
The Eye-to-Eye advert will initially be broadcast only in the UK, but it might be extended to Germany, the Netherlands and the USA.
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.