After looking through a few websites that had lists of interesting or creative print advertisements, several ads from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) caught my eye. I found a list of 55 WWF ads all together in one place, and decided to pick this one of a “homeless” tiger – just one in a series of many similar ads. The list of 55 ads was on speckyboy (http://speckyboy.com/2009/04/16/55-inspiring-creative-and-potent-ads-from-the-wwf/), an online design magazine. The context of a design magazine tells us that those readers probably weren’t the ad’s original intended audience.
The emotions that the image provokes are sadness, pity, disgust, and surprise. It really depends on the viewer to see how powerful these emotions may manifest themselves, as in, how high the viewer holds animals like tigers and elephants. It’s clear that the makers of the ad want the viewer to feel pity and sadness towards this situation, perhaps as we should for any debilitated “animal” in such a humiliated position. The ad is in black and white, with the tiger laying sadly and helplessly in the open. It seems like a high-traffic area, and most people are just passing by, with just one pedestrian looking on at the tiger. All the emotions that we would (or should?) feel towards a helpless and homeless person, laying in an open area, are applicable to this ad. The makers add the element of surprise by substituting a tiger with a homeless person.
The behavior that the authors of the ad want is to support their cause of wildlife preservation through the donation of money. There isn’t additional text on the ad, but only the brand and logo of WWF in the top left corner. Also, they aim to educate or raise awareness of what deforestation does to wild animals: displaces them from their homes. The everyday viewer doesn’t have a direct hand or influence in deforestation, so it’s clear that donation is the simplest path to supporting the cause.
As for the interpretation, we have all the common reactions of pity and disgust (not towards the subject but towards the situation) towards homelessness, but it is increased by the presence of a noble animal like the tiger. Our interpretation is: “This is wrong! A tiger shouldn’t be subject to conditions like this, but deserves to be in the wilderness.” It is emphasizing the reality that animals deserve to live in their natural habitats, and deforestation destroys that possibility. In order to stop this, the World Wildlife Fund is asking the viewer to donate to their fund in order to save the animals.
However, as I was thinking about this ad and looking at it more in depth, I was hit with another level of sadness and disappointment. Our interpretation is that such a noble animal like a tiger doesn’t deserve to live in abject poverty and humiliating circumstances like we can see above, but what about a human being? As I said before, the emotional potency of this ad depends on how the viewer values animals. The ad includes an element of surprise because of the tiger in an uncommon habitat, but generally, we are desensitized to the plight of homeless people. Like the people passing by the tiger in the ad, we would likely pass by this ad if it was a typical homeless person in this situation and not a tiger.
As for Aristotle’s stereotypical types, this advertisement doesn’t really appeal directly to any age group or even any certain class. Of course, the WWF would prefer that the advertisement moves wealthy people to donate to their cause, but nothing in the ad is particularly targeting wealthy people. As with basically all of the WWF advertisements, they hope to target people who have high regard towards animals and their conditions, and who want to make a change through their advocacy and donation.
In general, this advertisement is memorable because of the surprise factor of seeing a wild animal in a position of humiliation and homelessness. We should feel sadness and disgust towards this situation, and therefore the advertisers from the WWF were successful in arguing their point, but perhaps the deeper question is why we are shocked at animal “homelessness” and not humans in homelessness. A simple ad exactly like this but substituted with a person would not have the same effect. Perhaps it could be argued that if we have enough money to support efforts against deforestation for the conservation of wildlife, we may want to start thinking about the reality of poverty for the many millions of humans.
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