Humanitarian Ads Targeting Potential Donors: A Case Study on Save The Children Promotional Strategies

This paper explores the multimodal strategies employed in humanitarian advertise- ments, with a focus on Save The Children’s campaigns addressing the Syrian civil war. The paper investigates how Syrian war victims and refugees are portrayed through verbal and visual elements and how these representations construct an idealized Western audience. By adopting a multimodal analytical framework, the study analyses the tension between real and constructed images of suffering, the persuasive function of guilt appeals, and the transforma- tion of humanitarian ads into a sub-genre of commercial advertising. Through an analysis of selected images and video campaigns, we identify key narrative and visual strategies that are meant to shape audience perception and engagement. Findings show that Save The Children’s ads rely on demanding imagery and strategic framing, so as to evoke empathy and prompt donations, ultimately positioning the viewer as a guilty bystander, and, at the same time, a potential agent of change.