Advertising - Social Issues - Liking Isn't Helping

When scrolling through Facebook recently I saw that a friend of mine had shared a link to 'the 40 most powerful social advertisement'. I looked through all of them and I found that they were all really thought provoking - but I wanted to show off my top ten on here. So here's a good one to start of with - Liking Isn't Helping.

Liking Isn't Helping was a campaign created by Publicis, Singapore. The campaign is meant raise awareness for volunteering, and shows that the only way you can truly help is by getting involved with a project rather than 'liking' it on sites like Facebook. 

The use of children making audiences pay more attention as children are more vulnerable and generally need more help that adults. The campaign is also more likely to get attention from using children in their ads, as they are more captivating. The audience will see a child in distress and believe that they can't help themselves, whereas an adult has a little more control over the situation. 

The gruesome imagery is captivates the audience, as it is shocking. If this advertisement was shared on Facebook or Instagram it could be easily missed if the picture had a positive message attached to it. But because the image connotes death and pain it suddenly becomes more interesting, because people want to know what's happening around the world. The black and white effect on the image can also make it stand out from the colourful bright backgrounds and other images on social networking sites. However, I believe Publicis most likely used this colour scheme to show the lifelessness of 'liking' content like this. The message behind the monochrome colour choice suggests that 'liking' the page is almost as bad as ignoring the problem. 

Another concept of this advertisement that really stood out for me was the thumbs ups around the image. If each person only puts up one thumbs up, then that's 9 people stood around that child. That's 9 people who have really done nothing. This aspect made me feel more emotion towards the child, as he isn't being helped, despite having all this attention. On the other hand, the thumbs up are drawing the audience into the central image - which mirrors the effect of social networking, when you like something, your friends can also see that you've liked it. 

I do really love this campaign as I believe it highlights a common problem that we are facing at the moment - de-sensitisation of human race. We are more concerned about new Iphones and the latest celebrity news, but we can easily block out images we aren't interested in, or that may make us feel emotions that aren't particularly pleasant. 

Information found via;

http://www.boredpanda.com/powerful-social-advertisements/