TOW #9: Visual

In the advertisement titled “Liking Isn’t Helping.  Be a volunteer.  Change A life” released by Crisis Relief, Singapore, the advertising agency attempts to guilt the world into wanting to help those in need.  I believe that this advertisement accomplished this task through not only their use of strong and disturbing imagery, but also through their appeal to ethos by using photos of actual people in need as opposed to drawings.  Within the image, it can be see that multiple individuals are giving thumbs up to struggling children.  This represents how people from across the world show support in helping these children in need through social media.  The only issue with that however as portrayed in this piece of propaganda is that the children are still struggling, despite how many thumbs up are present.  This is because the advertiser is trying to emphasize that while people may show support of helping these children, nothing is actually done to help these children.  The only way to help struggling people in need is through either physically helping or through donations, not through liking status on social media.  By using actual pictures of struggling children to portray this, the advertiser not only guilts the audience into supporting those in need by showing these real life issues, but also prove to the audience that these issues are not being solved.  The audience, being these those who do not do their part in helping people, are then shown why spreading awareness on social media will never help those in need.  They will never help a child be nursed to health.  They will never give a child a home.  They will never feed a hungry child.  Another characteristic of this picture is that the images are in black and white.  That is in order to further stress the audience to help these children by using dull and depressing color schemes to appeal to pathos.  This is why this advertisement by the  Crisis Relief, singapore advertising agency is so effective.