What kind of advert would your supporters create for you?

One feature of the general election campaign has been the failure of the main parties to produce much in the way of really memorable or persuasive advertising. There’s certainly been nothing to match any of the powerful adverts below. Remember these?

 

1979 Saatchi and Saatchi (Voted poster of the century)

 
 

1992 M & C Saatchi

 1997 M & C Saatchi

This time, the real stand-out advertising hasn’t been made by professionals, but by the voters. I’m sure you’ll have seen some of these, but here’s a few of my favourites, being as politically neutral as possible.

From www.mydavidcameron.com

  From the Guardian 

From Liberal Conspiracy 

And this one, via @derekhumphries

Did I say I was going to be politically neutral? Sorry, I tried - that's about as neutral as I get.

Of course, there's nothing new about spoofing adverts, but what has changed is how quickly and easily we can make adverts ourselves and circulate them. Anyway, I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this one. Without wishing to do myself out of a job, I started to think: if voters have created the best advertising of the general election campaign, what might donors do for the charities they support? 

Or rather, what are donors doing for the charities they support? Because of course they are creating adverts of their own every day. Here's a few I like.

 

In full here.

In full, here

To be honest, I could have picked any number here. But if pushed for a reason, I'd say this. The first one is written by a father and describes in an incredibly moving way why he is trying to raise £2,500 for the hospital which saved his baby's life. Read it and you will want to give. The second one - called 'miss you' - is also very touching. Set up in memory of a friend, the donor is fundraising on a ongoing basis for Breast Cancer Campaign. After each event, she thanks everyone who has donated and tells them with great enthusiasm what they have achieved.

So again, I think you'll see where I'm going with this one – fundraising is sadly often done with more passion, more honesty and more meaning by donors. Are their adverts on brand? Undoubtedly not, in most cases. At least not in the way many charities understand and develop their brands. Donors base their adverts on their experience of a cause or a charity, so if your brand and the brand experience are one and the same, you'll recognise a closeness. But if your brand is a set of design rules and approved language, you'll see a huge dissonance with what donors are doing on your behalf. And if you hadn't guess it already, all of this is to prove how pointless it is having a brand guardian/dragon overseeing your communications in an age when your brand isn't in your control. 

This post would go on a lot longer if I was to go into this in any great depth, so instead, I'll send you to a couple of relevant posts by @markyphillips if you like to read more about this.

Click here to read more about brand experience - contains a presentation by Ije Nwokore, Senior Strategist at Wolff Olins.

Click here to read why it's good that you no longer control the message - contains a presentation by Alexis Ohanian (of Reddit)

Finally, I thought I'd share this example because I can't actually tell whether it's made by an individual or the charity, precisely for the reason I've outlined above - the brand and brand experience being the same. It's an amazing film.

Next post, I'm hoping to write about two of the best brands I've worked with here at Bluefrog. But that's it for now. All the best, Aline.