Shelter Analysis

The Shelter campaign advert aims to win over the audience's empathy and sympathy by presenting the brand ambassadors as potential victims to homelessness. All three adverts utilise direct address to paired with a nervous facial expression to show the audience their desperation. The close up shot of their faces is suggests a level of intimacy between every individual audience member viewing the advert, almost as if individual members of the audience are being asked for their help, making it more difficult to refuse donating which is the purpose of the advert. The decision to use a close up could alternatively be a way of reflecting to the audience what they themselves could potentially have been or be become, targeting their empathy to encourage or perhaps guilt the reader into donating. The colour scheme of black and red is a combination that symbolising danger and darkness; a representation of what the lives of people who seek Shelter are like. The contrast to this colour scheme are the faces of the victims themselves which is brightened by the lighting This may suggest that the the victims were once living bright, colourful lives and could once again live the same if not better lives with the help of the audiences donations. The slogans are pasted directly onto the faces in large, bold, red text to connote the urgency of the situation. The text is connotes doubtfulness in the sense that they are unsure whether they will be able to recover from the position they are currently in, pulling on the audience's string of sympathy. The victims are portrayed as normal, roughly middle class and consist of both male and females from different ethnic backgrounds, implying that anyone could potentially have to seek Shelter, supporting the argument for why audiences should donate to their campaign. This campaign avoids the portrayal of stereotypical homeless victims with rugged appearances, living on the streets as in most cases victims are not subdued into such positions. The victims portrayed in the adverts seem much more realistic, appearing to be as 'normal' as the majority of people placed into a desperate, undesirable situation; the campaign presents a motif of constantly targeting the audiences levels of sympathy and empathy to persuade into donating more, a strategy used by many advertising campaigns such as Shelter. The Shelter campaign was launched after the government had significantly reduced the budget on social housing in 2010, leaving numerous people to be evicted and left potentially homeless as they struggled to afford the inflated prices that the landlords burdened them with. The campaign advert's target audience does not consist of any children as their purpose is to raise money to support the Shelter seekers, therefore it would be a violation of the ASA guidelines as charity campaigns are prohibited from requesting any money from children.