Surely it is impossible for an Amnesty International campaign about human rights in the UK to be too political?
But in the eyes of advertising clearance agency Clearcast that was exactly the case, as the agency ruled that a recent ad from the NGO had gone too far – despite not containing even a passing mention to Westminster.
Brought together by young agency Shape History, Amnesty UK’s recent star-studded trailer features Olivia Colman and Adrian Lester as part of a hard-hitting drama-inspired spot about a young woman (played by Bea Svistunenko) who is living in temporary accommodation.
The film sees Svistunenko’s character taking legal action after her baby dies, with the help of Colman (who plays a lawyer). It challenges viewers to consider human rights through the lens of people living in the UK, with a focus on health and access to housing, food and healthcare.
Due to its political nature Clearcast said it couldn’t be shown on TV, meaning the film was restricted to cinema screens and social media.
Whether Clearcast was extra cautious because it is election year, or because of Amnesty International’s wider role in political discourse (including globally around decriminalising abortion, the death penalty and policies around asylum seekers) – the decision has certainly caused upset.
“It sort of proves the point. We did this to get people to pay attention to things that are happening in real life,” says Shape History writer and creative lead on the campaign Zoë Dawson.
Amnesty International UK CEO Sacha Beshmukh went further, pulling no punches as he lambasted the clearance agency’s decision.
“Blocking our ads when other rights-based organisations such as UNICEF, Oxfam and Save the Children are correctly allowed on air, that’s a form of censorship, and Clearcast are themselves politicising these fundamental issues,” he said at the time.
The process of getting adverts cleared by Clearcast includes a series of checks which review whether the ad complies with the UK Code of Broadcast Advertising (BCAP), which says that all advertising in broadcast media should not “mislead, cause harm or offend”.
As part of this, Clearcast acknowledges that its definition of political goes beyond party political.
It added: “It is important to note that the definition of “political” in the rules is not limited to party politics but covers wider campaigning and activism. Unfortunately, Amnesty International hasn’t yet demonstrated to us their acceptability under all aspects of the political rules. We have invited them to do so.”
‘As soon as Amnesty comes in, it becomes political’
“It’s deeply ironic that we created a TV drama that wasn’t allowed to be shown on TV,” Dawson says.
She explains that when the brief came in she had just finished watching Happy Valley and realised that the show contains “all kinds of storylines about workers rights, and human trafficking – all of which are obviously human rights abuses.”
“Because it was framed as a TV show it made me think about it without knowing I was thinking about it which was really clever, even if it wasn’t intentional,” Dawson adds.
While showing the issues on shows is deemed acceptable viewing, according to Dawson it becomes murkier when charity campaigns tackle the same hard-hitting topics. “As soon as Amnesty International comes in, and we have facts to back it up, we have those real stories – it suddenly becomes political,” she says.
Drawing on the reality that drama trailers are usually created after the series is written, she actually wrote scenes that would have taken place over six episodes: “You’d usually make a trailer with all the content from the episodes – I kind of wrote them and went back to the trailer.”
Part of the thinking behind positioning the campaign in this way stemmed from the fact that, from the outset, Shape History knew they were going to have Colman, who was already an Amnesty ambassador, on board for filming. They wanted to make full use of the Oscar-winning actor’s dramatic abilities by getting her to act out a role rather than play herself.
“We immediately thought we don’t want to just do a standard charity ad where Olivia Colman is herself speaking at the screen,” says Dawson.
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Shape History associate strategy director Leila Hashemi adds: “There are a tonne of celebrities, including famous footballers and musicians who are super outspoken about issues from human rights to climate change.”
“But if you put them in front of your parents, or someone who is less activistic, that is just going to completely alienate them. So the choice of celebrity was really important. It was almost like having your aunty or uncle speaking to you directly.”
It is telling that despite being labelled ‘political’ this Colman spot is intended to be decidedly democratic viewing (no surprise given her wide-ranging appeal from Peep Show to The Crown and The Favourite).
As Dawson puts it: “Amnesty cares about the right to protest but that wasn’t an issue this audience were going to engage with in any form. We did quite a lot of thinking about audience first and then looking into human rights issues,” she says.
She also highlights that the cost-of living crisis, the housing crisis, and the impact on the NHS are “things that we see as inevitable crises that we don’t frame as human rights”.
“So we landed on that space as somewhere where could say something new and actually reframe what we were doing,” she explains.
‘They’re shocked by the truth’
In a move which makes sense given that it’s formatted as a drama trailer, there were always plans for the ad to appear on the big screen in partnership with Pearl and Dean.
“It is the only space you can actually guarantee that happens with an audience. Because on digital devices people won’t see the whole thing, on TV they might go and make a cup of tea,” Dawson says.
She adds that she was pleasantly surprised when she arrived at the cinema and she could hear audible gasps, and “everyone went silent and looked at each other”.
“You have a seated audience feeling very comfortable going to see a drama trailer and then feeling very shocked by the truth.”
The shock factor is only increased by the hard-hitting statistic that appears at the end of the spot, “This isn’t drama, this is real life,” says Colman before the statistic that 34 homeless children died in temporary accommodation last year.
This is so powerful…
And all before our eyes.
— Marina Purkiss (@MarinaPurkiss) March 10, 2024
When it comes to metrics, Hashemi highlights that with regards to the cinema they’ve capitalised on the captive audience to begin creating quantitative databases, but have also asked for more qualitative data with questions about whether it’s changed audience’s attitudes.
“A lot of people within the marketing world are really good at gathering quantitative metrics, which works well if you’re measuring the reach of a digital ad but our objective is more around changing people’s opinions,” she adds.
“They’re not political issues, they’re non partisan issues. We’re trying to communicate with the campaign that these are fundamental human rights that people need to live,” Hashemi says.
Since the campaign the figure about the number of children who died in temporary accommodation has been upped to 55, as the causes of more deaths were determined. For the most part these were from damp, mouldy and overcrowded conditions.
That is political, but you don’t need to subscribe to any party to understand the message and to know that creatives finding new ways to share it is a must.
