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Adam Rothwell
- Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Children’s charity Barnardo’s courts controversy like nobody else. Over the past few weeks, one of its major goals seems to have been to make the headlines. Here’s a quick re-cap of what it’s done.
- Publish the results of a controversial survey which purportedly showed that many adults viewed children as ‘feral’.
- Get into hot water with the Advertising Standards Authority for a particularly hard-hitting TV ad.
- Publicize a speech by its boss, Martin Narey, which pondered whether Baby P would have ended up as a ‘yob’, had he not met such a tragic death.
But is this a good or a bad thing? Well, it’s easy to criticize such a publicity-hungry approach. First off, commissioning research is expensive. So is putting on TV ads – especially when they’re innovative and controversial. And just managing such a big PR operation takes a lot of resources. As charities struggle with the pressures of recession, it’s easy to see how Barnardo’s could be criticized.
But I think that criticism is misguided – mostly. Barnardo’s may well have a point when it says that many adults have an unnecessarily negative view of children, and broadcasting this message to the widest possible audience is the best way of getting this attitude to change. Likewise, though a hard-hitting advert might offend some, it also might get people to change how they behave.
Bringing about such widespread change can be a worthy goal for any charity. But the tricky part is trying to measure whether such campaigning represents good value for money. I hope that, in this latest publicity spree, Barnardo’s has worked out a way of measuring that.
Tongue in cheek? David, I don't know what you're talking about.
Seriously, though, measuring the impact of campaigns is also a problem for us, and it's something we think about a lot. But it takes a lot of effort, and it can seem a thankless task. Which is why, I think charities are generally not very good at it.
Adam, Intelligent Giving
What, a charity publishing a controversial survey in order to raise its profile? How outrageous. Who would do a thing like that. I do assume you had your tongue in your cheek when you wrote this article Adam. Anyway, Barnados are right - with such awful media coverage of children as their has been in recent years, people in Britain have a very poor attitude towards children and young people, which is unhealthy for society in general.
I agree with you on this, SimonK. I think that question is really very rubbish indeed, simply because it's almost impossible to know what it means. Frankly, it makes me wonder whether Barnardo's designed the question because they wanted to get a particular answer. Surely they could have just asked, "Do you think children these days could be described as 'feral'?" Why didn't they?
Adam, Intelligent Giving
I can't actually find the right one on their rather rubbish website. But from what I read from the press release, it looks like a horrendously shoddy piece of research.
One of the questions apparently asks people if they agree or disagree with the statement, "People refer to children as feral but I don’t think they behave this way". Frankly, I wouldn't have a clue how to answer that if I'd been asked. I would probably disagree with it, because I don't think that people (outside of Daily Mail world) tend to refer to children as "feral". But according to Barnardos, that would put me in the 45% of people who do think of children as feral!
You can't ask two different questions at once like that and expect anyone to take your research seriously.
This campaign has been dogged by controversy since its launch along with some hard hitting PR last month. While this campaign aims to highlight misconceptions, the shock tactics it has used do run a danger of overshadowing some of the very serious messages Barnardo’s is highlighting and it would be foolish to pretend that the positive messages Barnardo's want to communicate with this campaign will necessarily be heard.
The headlines that accompanied the research released to promote this advertising campaign screamed of adults' fear of 'feral' children infesting our streets – it’s hardly the message a charity aiming to promote child welfare should be associated with.
However behind the hype surrounding the launch of this campaign there are some very important issues that it raises which Barnardo’s should be praised for. The “break the cycle" advert in particular tackles a number of serious issues around the abuse and violence that young people suffer on a daily basis. If the ASA has received complaints then it is quite right that they investigate them appropriately, however this must not detract from the fact that the government needs to take action to protect young people from the kind of graphic violence portrayed in these adverts which is all too real for a number of young people in the UK.