Hard-hitting stories in Barnardos campaign

ADVERTISING & MARKETING: The most powerful public service campaign to be launched this month is not, as might have been expected, the first phase of the long-awaited multi-million Government anti-racism advertising campaign, but the low-budget Barnardos one.

The most disappointing aspect of Irish International's poster and press advertisement for the anti-racism initiative is how safe and bland it is.

It features gaelic football star Jason Sherlock and the smart but meaningless line about the Dubliner being part of a small ethnic minority because he's a Dub with All-Ireland medals.

It's a potentially confused message because while the line might be cute, it could easily be read in a negative way - i.e. an Asian- looking man in Ireland is fine once he assimilates totally by, for example, excelling at the national game. Read that way, it's the opposite of the campaign's stated objective of interculturalism.

A spokesperson for Irish International said it was the starting point in a long campaign and the idea was to launch the Know Racism concept with a well-known, easily recognisable person, identifiable for his achievements. The next phase of the campaign will begin "within four to six weeks".

In contrast, Ms Gai Griffin and Mr Bren O'Flaherty's work for the child welfare agency Barnardos carries a strong and emotive message about the power of childhood experiences to influence entire lives.

The "Every childhood lasts a lifetime" campaign was devised by Cawley Nea Advertising and the three 30-second television advertisements show three different adults - a woman at home, a mechanic and a nurse - telling a disturbing story from their childhoods.

The voices coming out of the troubled-looking adults' mouths are their voices as children.

"When we were casting the advertisements, we went for quite mundane, ordinary looking visuals and situations," says Mr Brian Raftery of Nomad Productions, which produced the television advertisements.

"The power of the commercials is in the stories that they are telling."

The child actors who provided the voiceovers ranged in age from six to 10. They were given a script but were encouraged to improvise.

Everyone involved with producing the advertising campaign either worked for free or for a fraction of their normal fees so that the campaign, which would have a value of €500,000, cost the children's charity €50,000.

The advertisements will appear on television, radio, cinema, outdoor and press.

"We adopted what's called the favoured-nation approach on the shoot," says Mr Raftery, "so that everyone from the runner making the tea on the two-day shoot to the director got paid the same token fee."

The advertising agency, post-production facilities and recording studios worked for free.

Poster site owner JCDecaux donated sites.

The advertising push is part of Barnardos's two-year "Every Child Matters" campaign which starts this month.