Underneath the statement there is an underlined sentence that asks whether a supporter of the charity will donate £19, so that homeless people can be re-homed. It does not say whether this donation is a one off payment or whether you pay £19 per month or per year.
The main bulk of the advert starts off as if someone was narrating the story to the reader. The first paragraph is an introduction to try and capture the reader’s emotions. After the first paragraph the advert begins to tell the story of a lady who lost her son on Christmas day. It sets the scene by telling the reader when the charity received information relating to the mother and child’s separation on Christmas day. The advert uses simple sentences to get it message across. Sentences like, ‘she was distraught’ or ‘it was Christmas day’.
As the advert goes on it starts to play with the reader’s emotions by using negative sentences such as ‘the empty streets of London’. After the first three paragraphs it inserts a sentence that describes what ‘Shelter’ is there for. It starts to include present tense as it describes the organisation. Words like ‘ is open’ and ‘it runs’. The advert also tries to emphasise certain words in relation to the story. It states that the council in the story were breaking the law. When it writes this sentence in the story it uses bold type to catch the readers attention. It also uses bold type when describing how the organisation reunited the mother and son in the advert.
After the story is finished it includes a sentence written as if the mother in the story had written it. Similar to the sentence written by the child at the begging of the advert. Just to the right of this sentence it shows a picture of the mother and the child, which identifies who they are and the joy that they got from being reunited thanks to ‘Shelter’. This advert definitely uses the soft sell approach in this advert to try and gain supporters.
The second advert I will look at is an advert by the NSPCC. It uses a more shocking and harder approach when trying to gain support. This advert starts by capturing the reader’s raw emotions by showing a picture of a young female child in a distressing state. The picture takes up about 50% of the overall page.
The heading for the advert is placed to the right of the picture in a bordered text box. It reads ‘four years old seriously underweight for her age. Scavenging for food where she can find it. And she’s English.’ This piece of text tries to put a harsh reality across that this sort of thing does happen all over the world, even in a country that is one of the richest, most civilised countries in the world. The words used in this piece of text highlights how the girl is in serious trouble. It highlights how very underweight this child is. It also uses words that like scavenging that we would relate to animals, not human children.
The next piece of text is placed directly underneath the text box. This piece of text talks about the situation the girl is in. It talks about how the father of the girl does not acknowledge her and the mother is too frightened to help the child. The vocabulary used in the text has been kept as simple as possible so that everybody is able to understand the advert. The advert uses a lot of pronouns such as you, we, they and I. The rest of the text in the advert talks about how much the organisation is asking for. They state an exact figure of £15.48, which they say can protect the child for two weeks. This figure indicates they have itemised every thing the child will need within this two-week period. The advert also tries to pick up other donations by telling people that who ever can’t afford the £15.48 that any other donations are welcome. Underneath the text, the advert includes a form that the organisation expects people to complete and return.
Out of the two adverts I think that the NSPCC’s advert has the most appeal. I think that the picture of the child may put people off reading the advert as many people fail to recognise that this sort of thing happens in their own country.
