Shelter - Charity Advert Qs

Charity Advert: Shelter

What was the purpose of the 2011 Shelter campaign? – Shelters ‘A Home For Everyone’ campaign is a non-commercial product that uses media language elements and constructs representations to encourage donations to the charity rather than a product purchase. Shelter is a charity that alleviates the distress caused by bad housing and homelessness. Shelter aim to ensure there’s a safe, secure and affordable home for everyone.

Who were the target audience? – The target audience is more adults than younger people or children; this is because the advert is for a charity and are encouraging people to donate money. They would therefore direct this advert at adults because they are the ones with the financial ability to help.

How was the campaign funded? –

How is this campaign different from other charity campaigns? – The campaign is a good example of charity advert genre conventions. Charity adverts use certain techniques to create sympathy or ‘shock’ their audience. Some of these techniques include facts and statistics, direct address of the character looking directly into the camera at the audience, the character appearing desperate or needy, creation of empathy for the characters by requiring the audience to consider how they would feel if they were in the same situation, and shock and fear, often with the use of disturbing images or language, to make the audience feel they must contribute to the charitable cause.

How has media language been used within this campaign? – The use of three individuals, each with a different anxiety about their housing, however all with a lack of expression, creates a fear that this could happen to anyone, even the reader. The close up and direct address of each individual looking directly into the camera, and therefore to the audience, personalises the characters and heightens the emotion that can be seen in their faces. This helps connote their plight and difficulty, subsequently creating sympathy in the audience for the cause of the charity.

What groups are represented in this advert? How are they represented to the audience? What might be the potential impact of this representation? – The individuals do not look like stereotypical homeless people, and in fact look fairly ‘normal’. This supports the view that homelessness can happen to anyone, and you can’t always tell by the way they look. By using ‘normal’ people, the campaign can be directed at a wider group of people and becomes more relateable.

How do you think audiences would have responded to this campaign? What would the preferred/negotiated/oppositional reads of this media text be? – The Shelter campaign can be seen to communicate a number of ideological values, come of them contrasting. The advert reinforces a viewpoint that social inequality is unjust and that those in position of social power or wealth have a duty to help those who have not. In this context, the advert supports a social, liberal view with the idea that we have a social duty to help one another. The preferred reading of the Shelter ‘A Home For Everyone’ campaign could be that homelessness can happen to anyone for a number of different reasons. There is also an additional preferred meaning that suggests we should feel empathy and responsibility for helping others who are less fortunate than ourselves. But the audience response to and interpretation of the advert will depend on the demographic and experience of the audience. In particular, it will depend on their views towards charity and how they respond to the representations constructed.

What does this campaign tell us about the social context in which it was created? – The Shelter advert represents the inequalities of wealth in society so is appealing to those who have and can give to those who have not. The adverts reflect the social position of the middle classes as benevolent due to inequalities of wealth and income.