Existing poverty social action products research…

‘Help, so that no one has to come here for food’

This interesting concept was brought by Vitae to the streets of Portugal in an attempt to create shock value amongst those emptying rubbish into their bins. It was predominantly targeted at homelessness specifically, and has the writing ‘help, so that no one has to come here for food’ next to a worn out looking man. This kind of shock value marketing is often great at instantly spreading awareness, and would be a valuable asset to take with me when creating my campaign.

Novelty and original idea, unavoidable and in the public eye at all times.

Large image of victim adds to the shock value

Command word ‘help’ stresses importance of the issue, further pushing people to get involved.

‘Poverty shouldn’t be a life sentence’This poster was created by the Salvation Army, and gives it’s audience a clear message that poverty shouldn’t be something that someone is sentenced to for life, and uses the word sentence as a form of metaphor for the imprisonment that poverty often casts upon it’s victims. It also gives it’s viewer the idea that poverty is something that I in many ways unnecessarily criminalised. It is particularly relevant for my research due to being a poster distributed throughout the UK, so it is likely to be targeted at a similar audience to my campaign. This use of play on words is something I can potentially look at using for inspiration when starting my production. This range of posters (include several other similar ones) were distributed nationwide in various public areas such as hospitals etc.

The clear logo allows the poster’s audience to instantly associate the poster with Salvation Army.

The use of a prison based image helps to highlight the play on words for those who might have otherwise not caught onto it.

A quick and snappy play-on-words is effective in order to reveal the harsh reality of the entrapment of reality to the poster's audience.

‘Stop hunger’ – unknown sourceWith this particular example of an existing product I’ve found on the internet, I haven’t a actually been able to find the source of the poster or the organisation who produced it. Despite this, I really enjoy the bold simplicity of the poster, which chooses a very clean look, rather than crowded images like most of the others I found. The fork represents the hunger, but also doubles up as a hand being put out as if to indicate ‘stop’ the hunger. This technique instantly adds novelty value to the poster, this grabbing people’s attention. To add to this, the high contrast between the fork, writing and background adds to this attention grabbing value. Furthermore, red is a colour that often connotes stopping so in this way the poster reinforces the fact that it wants it’s audience to stop poverty.

‘How did the war on poverty become the war on the poor?’

This poster was part of a chain of posters created by Occupy (A small British organisation who’s work has gone viral over the internet, and has been recognised by the BBC and ITV) in a campaign to change attitudes towards poverty. The set of posters all entail this similar visual style, much like something that has been rotoscoped. The rhetorical question that has been asked encourages the poster’s audience to think, and is thought provoking. The bold capital letters make the words jump out of the poster, further reinforcing this. On Occupy’s website, they use a basic yet easy to navigate tubmlr layout for their website with a donate button at the top of the screen which utilises the PayPal donation system. Despite the simplicity of this organisation and what it stands for, I really think there’s a lot I can take from it, especially due to the fact that it is also based in England, and started off with very little funding.

Save the Cilhdren – Child poverty video

This is an example of how an organization (Save the Children) has approached the issue of poverty with a different technique, by using a video rather than a poster. The use of a video allows a more in depth display of some of the effects poverty can have. By using moving images to portray children effected by it, it helps to bring the issue to life more than a poster typically would. The use of a video allows for more info/facts/figures to be presented through audio, rather than just having to rely on a couple of sentences to get the point across. Celebrity endorsement (Paul O’grady presenting the video) has been used in this video in order to create a sense of association between the audience and the issue addressed, and creates a sort of bridging gap that is likely to engage members of the audience. Another interesting technique I picked up on from watching this is the use of very dull and morbid colors throughout. This was likely used to represent the dull reality of living with the effects of poverty, and the grey urban landscape (seen behind O’grady) really emphasizes these solemn emotions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04A_5q2h8Eg

Link to the video…

Conclusion…• What I’ve learned from evaluation these various organisations and the campaign’s

they’ve been involved in, is that there really is not set way to go about campaigning against poverty. The fact that all these organisations run on completely different scales and levels speaks for itself, some with very little funding and others with much more. Not only this, but the posters they have produced are all vastly different both in terms of visual style and meaning, all utilizing different techniques to pull in their audience. Some of these techniques will really come in hand when starting my own production, such as shock value, rhetorical questions etc. and by taking some of what I think is best from these and working with these features, I’ll be able to really get the best out of my own campaign. With this in mind, I think that I’ve learned that a lot of what makes these poverty campaigns so successful is their originality and novelty value, so I’ll keep this in mind at all times, and aim to create a campaign which really stands out in the crowd. I’ve also learned that video based campaigning can be an effective way of presenting information to an audience, due to the more immersive elements including moving images and audio, so including some form of video within my campaign could also prove useful.