The document provides context and analysis of a WaterAid charity advertisement. It discusses the product context of WaterAid as an organization, the cultural context of charity advertising, and analyzes the advertisement's use of media language and representation of its subject. Key points analyzed include genre conventions, Barthes' codes, representation through the lenses of Stuart Hall and Manuel Alvarado, and how the advertisement constructs identity using Gauntlett's theories. The overall purpose is to deconstruct how the advertisement conveys its message through visual and audio techniques.

1. A Level Media
Studies
Component 1
Section A
Advertising & Marketing
Media Language & Representation
Case Study: Wateraid

2. Component One Section A:
Advertising & Marketing
Water Aid Audio-visual Advert
LI: To understand & be able to apply the product & social context of the
advert.
To analyse media language & apply Semiotics.
Component One Section A:
Advertising & Marketing
(Media Language &
Representation)
1. WaterAid audio-
visual advert
2. Tide print advert
3. Kiss of the Vampire
film poster

3. Genre conventions of
advertising?
 Write down 3 genre conventions of advertising on a
post it note and stick it to the board.

4. Genre conventions of charity
advertising?
Look at the following charity adverts
Make notes on the visual and technical codes they use to create meaning.
How are they similar/different to conventional adverts?
Use the table in your handout to record examples.
Do they have their own (sub-)genre conventions?

14. Genre conventions of charity
advertising?
What visual and technical codes did they use to create
meaning?
How are they similar/different to conventional adverts?
Do they have their own (sub-)genre conventions?

15. Charity & Cause Advertising Youtube Playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szT7grQnHRU&list=PLUPxDOG-YGRCs_79sjpqEDD6DyX2Jh1a1

16. Starter: what are the conventions of charity
adverts?
Shocking, hard-hitting images (often using
children)
Emotive soundtrack
Use of a voice-over to reinforce the adverts’
message
Emotive language
Personalised narrative featured within the advert
Dark colours, bleak colour pallette
Personal address ‘you can make a difference’
Repetitive messages
Includes donation details
Memorable logo
Hard-hitting facts
Create continuity across a series of adverts

17. Wateraid: Product Context
 Water Aid charity established in 1981 as a response to United Nations
campaign for clean water, sanitation and hygiene education
 Works with organisations in 37 African, Asian & Central American
countries
 Prince Charles has been patron since 1991
 Created by Atomic London in 2016
 Shows 16 year old Zambian student Claudia and aims to depict how
communities benefit from clean water.

18. Wateraid: Cultural Context
 Following 1984’s Do They Know It’s Christmas?
single for Band Aid, 1985’s Live Aid was the first
global charity event aiming to raise funds for relief
of the ongoing famine in Ethiopia.
 The Comic Relief telethon was launched by
Richard Curtis and Lenny Henry in 1985 with the
same initial famine relief aim, and went on to raise
over £1bn for charitable causes across Africa and
in the UK.

19. Wateraid: Cultural Context
 The contemporary audience for this advert could
be assumed to be familiar with the codes and
conventions of both audio-visual adverts and
those for charitable organisations in particular.

20. Wateraid: Cultural Context
“Compassion Fatigue” and the “Empathy Deficit”
 In 2016,the “Charities Aid Foundation UK Giving report showed that
over a 10-year period, people are giving considerably less when
inflation is considered”.
 Charities were warned to “stop “hounding” donors by the Charity
Commission chief in a public statement’”.
 “Aggressive tactics have eroded goodwill in charities.”
 “Research shows the single biggest barrier to giving is a sense of
uncertainty that people’s money will translate into action.“
 “Another major barrier for giving is ‘cause overload’.”
 “The psychology of why people give […] is simple – having a personal
connection with the cause. If you have a pet, you’re more likely to want
to give to charities about animals.
http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2016/03/03/compassion-fatigue-era-giving-goodwill-over-so-
what-next-charity-marketing

21. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uiy3dkTwPcQ
Wateraid: Textual Analysis
Watch the advert and make notes on how media language (visual codes,
verbal codes, camera, editing, etc) is used to construct meaning.

56. Wateraid & Language
 The opening medium shot with a pull focus between
the digital radio and the rain against the window
establishes the advert in a modern, British setting (the
audio codes are of an announcer with an English
accent). It’s connoted that the scenes that follow (in
an unnamed but likely African country) are happening
at the same time.
 The visual and audio codes work together to construct
the narrative of “sunshine” (in Africa) “on a rainy day”
(in Britain) with the associated problems of drought and
“lack of access to clean drinking water” that the charity
is aiming to relieve.

57. Wateraid & Genre
 The Water Aid advert reinforces charity advertisement
conventions by including key information about the
concern, a personalised narrative to which this
information is relevant, and a direct appeal to the
audience for money.
 However, the fact it lacks a non-diegetic voiceover,
melancholic audio codes and black and white visual
codes could all be seen as unconventional of this
advertising sub-genre.

58. Barthes’ Codes
Roland Barthes (remember him – denotation/connotation) identified 5
types of code that create meaning in narratives.
What were they?
1. The Hermeneutic code (aka enigma code )
2. The Proairetic Code (aka action code)
3. The Semantic Code
4. The Symbolic Code
5. The Cultural Code (aka referential code)
How can they be applied to Wateraid advert. Watch again and make notes.

59. Barthes’ Codes
Consider:
How does the opening section of the advert create suspense to engage the audience?
At what point is the enigma resolved? How do the audio codes in the advert support
this resolution?
(0.31-0.45) How do the lyrics here “make me feel, make me feel, like I belong...don’t
leave me…” add another layer of meaning to the visual codes and enhance the
message of the advert?
What does the drought-ridden landscape symbolise to the viewer?
What cultural knowledge is required for audiences to fully understand the advert?

60. Wateraid & Semiotics
 Suspense is created through the enigmatic use of the slow-motion,
medium close-up, low-angle tracking shot of Claudia’s feet and the
swinging bucket (Barthes’ Hermeneutic Code) and emphasised by the
crescendo of the song in the scene at the water pump over which the
informative on-screen graphic appears (Barthes’ Proairetic Code).

61. Wateraid & Semiotics
 Barthes’ Semantic Code could be applied to the lines from the song
used from 00.34 diegetically and then as a sound bridge over the
medium shot of a group of women carrying water buckets on their
heads: “make me feel, make me feel like I belong... don’t leave me,
won’t leave me here”. The connotation here being that the text’s
audience can help Claudia “feel like she belongs” and “won’t leave” her
there / in that situation if they donate to Water Aid.

62. Wateraid & Semiotics
 The Symbolic Codes (Barthes) of drought- ridden African countries
are reinforced both visually and through the advert’s audio codes up
until about 00.47.

63. Representation

64. Stuart Hall is credited with the following ideas about Representation:
• Representation is the production of meaning through language, with
language defined in its broadest sense as a system of signs
• The relationship between concepts and signs is governed by codes
• Stereotyping, as a form of representation, reduces people to a few simple
characteristics or traits
• Stereotyping tends to occur where there are inequalities of power, as
subordinate or excluded groups are constructed as different or ‘other’ (e.g.
through ethnocentrism)

65. Advertising & Representation:
Stereotypes
What are the common stereotypes of black, Asian
and ethnic minorities used in the media and
especially charity advertising?

66. Ethnic Minority Stereotypes
Manuel Alvorado (1987) identified 4
themes in how ethnic minorities are
represented in the media:
1. Dangerous
2. Exotic (inc. sexualised)
3. Humorous/ridicule
4. Pitied
 https://wearenotentertainment.wordpress.com/cate
gory/alvarados-theory-1987-representation-of-
ethnicity/

67. Ethnic minority as dangerous
uncivilised
aggressive

68. Ethnic minority as exotic
mysterious
alluring
sultry
Hyper sexualised

69. Ethnic minority as humorous
Figure of fun/ridicule

70. Ethnic minority as pitied
weak
vulnerable
needing help
pitiful
helpless

71. Wateraid & Representation:
Social Context
 Launching the Rain For Good campaign, Water Aid said that it
had “deliberately broken away from the traditional charity ad
formula” in response to the public’s desensitisation to
traditional fundraising tactics.
 The stereotypical ‘victim’ needing our help is an archetype
with which the audience would be familiar from many other
charity adverts. This would perhaps make the more positive
representation of Claudia as a healthy, independent and
musically talented woman stand out to an audience who might
otherwise have become immune to the emotive representations
conventionally deployed by this advertising sub-genre.

72. Wateraid & Representation:
Social Context
Consider Water Aid’s ‘No
Choice’ TV advert from 2013
which is more conventionally
constructed and represents
the suffering of its main
‘character’ in a more explicit
and emotive way
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szT7grQnHRU

73. Wateraid
Representation
What parts of the ‘world’ (i.e. groups of people,
places, ideas, etc) are portrayed?
Are these representations stereotypical?
Do they go against stereotype in any way?
How is media language used to construct these
representations?
What aspects of reality have been selected and
omitted?
What values and beliefs (ideologies) are present
within the representation?
What factors do you think have impacted upon
this representation?
How can Stuart Hall’s ideas on representation be
applied?

74. Wateraid
Representation
1. What is the common stereotype used in
this type of charity advert?
2. How does the representation of Claudia
break away from the stereotypical
representations and why did WaterAid
choose to do this?
3. How is Claudia dressed? How does this
contribute to her representation?
Find evidence in the advert which suggests:
1. Claudia has had to grow up too fast
because of the tough environment in which
she lives.
2. Claudia is independent
3. Claudia is confident and happy, therefore
someone the audience can identify with.

75. Wateraid
Representation
 The dress codes of the advert’s
main female character include a
stereotypical knee-length skirt and
pink colour palette in both her top
and shoes.
 Her age is similar to the other
young women she walks past at
00.30 and those who join her at the
water pump at 01.00.
 This connotes that she has
perhaps had to “grow up too
quickly” because of the tough
environment in which she lives.

76. Wateraid
Representation
 Her independence is connoted by
the wide-angled shot at 00.18 in
which she is denoted on her own
on a long and empty dust road.
 Close-up shots using handheld
cameras (00.16), her open, con
dent gesture codes (00.51) and
her smiling gesture code (01.09)
represent her as the advert’s
protagonist and a ‘character’ with
whom the audience can positively
associate

77. Wateraid
Representation
 Stuart Hall’s theory of representation
– the images of a dry, dusty African
environment in which people may be
struggling to survive form part of the
“shared conceptual road map” that give
meaning to the “world” of the advert.
 The more positive audio codes then
work to challenge these stereotypical
representations, creating enigmas
around why Claudia appears to be so
positive. The solution to these enigmas
is given to the audience at 01.00 when
we first see the water pump.

78. Gauntlett - Theories of Identity
The media provide us with ‘tools’ or resources that we use to construct our
identities
In the past the media tended to convey singular, straightforward messages
about ideal types of males & female identities
The media today offer audiences a more diverse range of stars, icons and
characters from whom we may pick and mix different ideas
How can we apply Gauntlett to the Wateraid advert?
THEORY

79. Wateraid Identity
 Claudia acts as a role model for the
type of lifestyle changes that the
audience could be responsible for
creating if they donate to Water Aid.