Picture this: it’s nearly Christmas and the boiler’s packed in. You are currently showering in water that’s 2°C. You need to do something about it, so you call your handyman uncle fix it. Fast forward four hours and you’re somehow up to your knees in water and the turkey has just floated through the kitchen window. Time to call someone who knows what they are doing. January’s going to be fun.
The bottom line is that you get what you pay for. This applies across the whole spectrum of life from food to fairy lights, and includes advertising and marketing.
The bottom line is that you get what you pay for. This applies across the whole spectrum of life from food to fairy lights, and includes advertising and marketing.
For decades, advertising agencies have been offering charities pro-bono work. Looks like a big win from the outset – with cost saving and unparalleled access to creatives. For agencies too, working for meaningful causes is a draw for talent. But in reality, pro-bono doesn’t work.
For charities this isn’t a one-way street. The agency only agreed to do your ad because it wants to get an award. Instead of trying to answer your brief and deliver on your objectives, they will be ticking all the boxes that will get them to gold at Cannes: elegant, tick! Contentious, tick! Devoid of irritating details like sales points, tick!
It’s all beauty parades and masturbatory work. Exhibit A probably sounded like a great idea in the brainstorm: DDB Brazil cause outrage in 2009 for its ill-judged print ad on behalf of WWF. It showed dozens of planes converging on Lower Manhattan. The copy read: “The tsunami killed 100 times more people than 9/11. Conserve the planet. It’s brutally powerful.” DDB did get its award, but all WWF got was stick: I don’t think that was in the briefing.
Despite the thirst for awards, pro-bono is never a priority. The demands of the agency’s paying clients will always come first.
The danger is that, briefed by their own agency to create award-winning creative, teams come up with these outrageous and self-congratulatory ideas, and they can be incredibly awkward to bat away because you’re not a paying client. As a pro-bono recipient, you will be expected to accept what you get, and usually to foot the bill for its production, too.
Despite the thirst for awards, pro-bono is never a priority. The demands of the agency’s paying clients will always come first. This is simply something you will need to accept without question. Regardless of your timeline. As a creative, pro-bono work hangs over your head like homework on a Sunday afternoon: you can’t find the time as much as you want to.
The result? A six-months-too-late creative campaign that is admired by the navel-gazing advertising industry, but means nothing to your target audience, and doesn’t achieve what you wanted it to.
Back to the drawing board.
Ultimately, the financial benefit of pro-bono work is diminished by difficulties of prioritisation and creative differences. Charities need to invest in their campaigns, and build relationships with a dedicated team that can understand their objectives, challenges and the issue they represent to get real value for money. This is how award-winning and effective creative is made.