July 30, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
Which brings in more money: an image of a sad child or a happy one? It depends, says Jeff Brooks on the Donor Power Blog.
Mr. Brooks criticizes a recent study in the Journal of Marketing Research, which says that people are particularly sympathetic and likely to donate when viewing sad expressions.
“These findings straddle the line between blindingly obvious and just plain wrong,” he says.
Obvious, Mr. Brooks says, because people who have done research on fund-raising results know that sad images are often more effective.
But wrong because “the research didn’t look at actual fund-raising results,” he says. Mr. Brooks says that sorrowful expressions aren’t always more effective.
“Sometimes a happy image just kicks butt over a sad one,” he says.
And some children furrow their brows when they are sad, which may be misinterpreted as a scowl and draw little sympathy, according to Mr. Brooks.
He also warns against a “disconnect” between photographs and the content of fund-raising literature. A message about starving children, coupled with a picture of a smiling youth, doesn’t make sense, he says.
In the world of fund raising, Mr. Brooks concludes, it’s important not to generalize about which images work and which don’t.
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