How Charity Ads Fail

New study shows that few ads for nonprofit causes get noticed or remembered

Nonprofit organizations frequently promote themselves with magazine and newspaper advertisements,

but more often than not they are wasting donations of the space and any money they spent to produce or place the ads, a new report suggests.

A study of 195 print advertisements placed by nonprofit groups in major magazines from 1990 to 2000 found that “with few exceptions, the ads performed poorly in terms of capturing the readers’ attention, drawing them into the ad, and leaving a strong impression in their minds,” according to Andy Goodman, a Los Angeles communications consultant to nonprofit groups who wrote “Why Bad Ads Happen to Good Causes and How to Ensure They Won’t Happen to Yours.”

Mr. Goodman’s report is based largely on a study by RoperASW, a New York market-research company that measures the ability of an ad to capture and hold the attention of readers based on interviews with at least 100 people around the country. He interviewed nonprofit officials at some of the groups responsible for the ads to supplement the data.

The Edna McConnell Clark, Robert Wood Johnson, David and Lucile Packard, and Surdna Foundations, along with the Pew Charitable Trusts, contributed a total of $212,000 to pay for the research and the report.

Nonprofit leaders fail to create effective ads, says Mr. Goodman, in part because they lack marketing skills. While they can speak intelligently about the messages they want to convey, he says, when it comes to design “they may just be going by their gut.”

In addition, advertising agencies that offer free help to nonprofit groups sometimes assign junior staff members to the project, and inexperience can lead to flashy ads with poor results, he says. To make matters worse, nonprofit clients who are getting services donated by an advertising company often feel uncomfortable making a fuss to get an ad just right, says Mr. Goodman, lest their group be dropped by the agency.

Still, some ads are very effective. An ad by Cease Fire, a now-defunct organization critical of handguns, performed the best in the readership study thanks to a simple design with a powerful focal point — a gun with an identification tag that links the weapon to one family’s accidental tragedy. “It tells a story and gives you a message,” Mr. Goodman says of the illustration.

The clean lines and direct message of the anti-gun advertisement are in stark contrast with the ad that performed poorest in the study, for the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science. In that ad, for a New York group that raises money to support a research organization in Israel, about 200 words about science are squeezed into a thought cloud that seems to be rising out of a headline that reads, “The Idea Market.”

The ad’s cloud design led to uneven spacing between the words and featured regular and italic text that diminished in size, making it confusing and hard to read, says Mr. Goodman.

Jeffrey J. Sussman, vice-president for marketing communications at the American Committee, says the group is creating new ads to make a stronger case for supporting Weizmann.

“There’s anecdotal evidence that some people saw those ads and immediately recognized them as Weizmann ads,” he says. “And there is also evidence that some people saw them and said those are a little bit difficult to read.”

Based on RoperASW’s data and his own research, Mr. Goodman offers the following principles for nonprofit groups to follow when promoting their causes through public-service advertisements:

• Capture readers’ attention by keeping the ad simple, providing an unmistakable focal point and creating a clear path for the eye to follow from one element to another. “When you open up the page,” says Mr. Goodman, “your eye should know instantly where to go.”
• Make an emotional connection before attempting to convey information; stories, not lots of facts, do that best. The Cease Fire ad, which told the story of a girl who was killed by her parents’ gun when her younger brother fired it thinking it was unloaded, is an example of good storytelling, says Mr. Goodman.
• Write headlines that offer a reason to read more by stating a benefit, arousing curiosity, or providing timely news on an issue, for example. In the study, Save the Children, in Westport, Conn., captured readers with an ad headline that read, “If a little girl cries in a remote mountain village and no one hears her … is she any less hungry?” The type started off large and became increasingly smaller, drawing readers into the text.
• Use pictures to attract and persuade, but stay away from monochromatic images and avoid obscuring photos with text. When appropriate, charities should use photos of babies or other images that people are naturally drawn to.
• Make text readable with simple typography, clean design, and a length that is suitable to the subject and the publication the ad will be appearing in. Left-justified text and the use of bold type or lines to set off certain information, for example, can help readers navigate an ad, Mr. Goodman writes.
• Before deciding on an ad, test its effectiveness with focus groups and informal interviews, and make sure that publications will want to run it. After it has appeared, measure its success by paying for a readership survey or by including in the ad a way for people to respond, like a toll-free telephone number that has an extension listed only in the ads or a coupon with a code that identifies the publication in which the ad was placed.
• Remember that sometimes the most memorable ads are the ones that break the rules, or, as Mr. Goodman puts it, “When everyone zigs, it’s time to zag.”

Even when an advertisement is effective, says Mr. Goodman, it could often be made even better. An ad by the World Wildlife Fund, in Washington, used photographs of pandas, penguins, and polar bears with a headline referring to the world that said “An amazing place … don’t let it vanish without a trace.” The ad, which encouraged people to ask for an “action kit” on preserving the environment, prompted around 30,000 calls for the kit and led to donations from hundreds of new contributors.

While the images of the animals were powerful reminders of the greatness of nature, says Mr. Goodman, the ad could have been improved by placing a telephone number or Web address in the lower right, where the flow of the ad directs the readers’ eyes. Instead, that information was “left behind” at the top of the ad, Mr. Goodman says.

The World Wildlife Fund says that the magazine art directors it showed the ad to before the design was completed expressed no such concerns. Jo Lynn Dorrance, director of marketing communications at the environmental charity, says publications like Martha Stewart Living and Bon Appétit generated $4.5-million in donated advertising space for the campaign, which started in September 1999 and ran for almost a year. The campaign was so successful that a new one has been modeled on it, says Ms. Dorrance, with the contact information in the same place.

Single copies of “Why Bad Ads Happen to Good Causes and How to Ensure They Won’t Happen to Yours” are available free to nonprofit groups and can be ordered, while supplies last, from Andy Goodman, 3250 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 1400, Los Angeles, Calif. 90010. The report is also available on Mr. Goodman’s Web site at http://www.agoodmanonline.com.