Non-Profit Quarterly had a piece last week about an effort to “help” non-profits that is flawed on so many levels.
An advertising company has created a site, Clickbait For Good which is creating clickbait campaigns for charities, apparently without being asked. Setting aside the fact that clickbait has pretty much peaked and worn out its welcome, the images they are using with their campaigns are pretty inappropriate for the associated charities.
It is unclear if the charities consented to the clickbait headlines being created for them on the Clickbait For Good website. One hopes not.
- For Love 146 (human trafficking): “She fell for Mr. Perfect. You won’t believe what happened next” (with an accompanying image of a seated young girl in a frilly red dress).
- For Girls Not Brides (child marriage in places like Bangladesh): “OMG! She is just 16 and she has done things the Kardashians haven’t even thought about” (with an accompanying image of an elite wealthy woman wearing a white dress hiked as high as it will go before being pornographic, exiting the backseat of a luxury car carrying a bag containing her latest expensive purchase).
- For #Milk4Syria: “The ONE thing you need to know about drinking milk.”
- For American Foundation for Suicide Prevention: “Exclusive: See what happened only a week after Robin Williams’ suicide.”
I checked the webpage out and indeed the images are as cringe worthy as described-
Non-Profit Quarterly lays it out pretty clearly why these sort of campaigns do more harm than good when it comes to generating investment and trust.
The problem is that this ill-conceived initiative is likely to aggravate more than inspire. The website should offer charities the option to sign up to decline the offer.
Clickbait is sometimes clever, often misleading, always distracting, and by definition overpromises and under-delivers. Clickbait patronizes the donor and at best trivializes the charity’s mission. Nonprofits seek engagement and relationships, not mere clicks. View “counts” may pay the bills in the marketing world, but tricking people into clicking on charity content kills trust, which is the coin of the realm in the voluntary sector.
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Charities cannot game trust. Lying kills donor retention. The headlines above are morally indefensible. Clickbait is like learning to smile from a manual. Philanthropy is not grown in a petri dish. Charity is the result of honest human interaction and concern. Charity needs to be honored, not disgraced.
There is definitely fun to be had with click-baity ads, especially if you are spoofing the format to get people to attend a fun event. But to draw attention and support to serious crises, if there are appropriate, effective uses of the format, I have to imagine they can be counted on one hand.
There may not be a high likelihood that your arts organization will be targeted by one of these ads and the potential impact may not be as bad as for some of these humanitarian organizations. If these campaigns are indeed being created unsolicited, a neighboring organization might be grateful if you alert them to an ad that casts them in a questionable context.