La Publicité au secours des grandes causes – Advertising coming to the help of worthy causes – at Paris’s Les Arts Décoratifs shows a major collection of posters and films made for French NGOs and institutions to get across their messages.

The 300 posters and films in this exhibition show how how advertising has helped raise and shape public awareness, from the late 60s through to today. The exhibition covers six major themes: human rights, humanitarian aid, ecology, health, social exclusion and social aid, education and civic awareness.

In France, the student unrest of May 1968 led many intellectuals and graphic creatives to join forces, inspired by the same ideas of militancy against the establishment. At that time posters were the only advertising medium used, through graphic designers such as the Grapus collective and individuals such as Alain Le Quernec and Roman Cieslewicz.

In the mid 80s and early 90s many new NGO organisations were formed, extending their area of involvement and interaction. Their growth led to competition for the hearts and minds of the public and government and led them to become more ‘professional’ and to think in terms of strategy and conventional advertising (especially billboards and tv commercials), and so turning to advertising agencies.

The other reason for organisations investing in conventional advertising is the need to raise funds quickly. To reach the French public directly and instead of graphic illustration, the advertisers preferred the sometimes raw-edged photojournalism style, showing the victim or the aid worker – to engage the viewer directly – with the idea that a shocking message will be more effective, as it provokes a feeling of guilt.

The campaign by Action against Hunger ‘Leïla, 100 francs plus tard’ from 1994 is without doubt the key campaign that marked this new style. Today, even if the use of photography is still dominant, photojournalism has given way to photographs in which realism is ‘staged’, as in the latest campaign from the Fondation Abbé Pierre in 2007.

This holds true also for advertising films, which during the 80s and 90s preferred staged realism or animation. Even if NGOs use advertising as commercial companies to reinforce their name in the minds of the general public, the essential difference is the need to create a feeling of shared indignation and common humanity: for an association fighting against Aids, the key goal is not sales or profit, but accessing the collective conscience. François Bordas, professor at Paris communications school CELSA, underlines the fact that both commercial and NGOS share a common goal of having professional advertising but the difference is in the ethics.

Each year since 1997 the French government chose a social issue as the ‘Grande cause national’ and the organisations concerned with this issue are allowed 12 free advertising spots on tv and radio, designed to prick the conscience of the nation. In 1997 the cause was the Protection of Choldhood, in 1998 the Defence of the Rights of Man, in 2000 Roadside Safety, through to Organ Donation in 2009 and Violence against Women for 2010.

In recent years, agencies such as Limite or TBWA\CORPORATE\NON PROFIT have become specialist in NGO advertising and have also developed ‘ethical advertising’ or Goodvertsing’ for commercial companies, where ethical themes such as eco-awareness are very much part of the public’s desire to choose their products by ethical criteria.

La Publicité au secours des grandes causes runs until May 09 2010 at Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris

To view exhibition videos
Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris

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