Using the ordinary to communicate the extraordinary
Oxfam posted a really powerful tweet yesterday. In the space of fewer than 140 characters and an image, they managed to communicate three key things:
The remarkable support that they’re trying to provide to civilians in Yemen,
The very serious difficulties they face,
Their commitment to battling on, despite the challenges.
The fact that Oxfam are committed to delivering support in tough conditions probably won’t be news to any of us, but their choice of imagery, juxtaposing the ordinary (we’ve all sworn under our breath when we get home to find a card from the postie) with the extraordinary is what makes this so affecting.
A failed postal delivery normally means an extra day waiting for re-delivery or a trip to the depot for us to pick up our latest merch from Amazon, but failed aid deliveries cost lives.
Oxfam aren’t the first to try this juxtaposition, we saw a number of charities ‘news jack’ the tube strikes in April 2014. these examples from Save the Children and Leonard Cheshire particularly stand out:
Check out Save’s tweet here
Check out LCD’s tweet here
Oxfam could have used images of prone, starving victims, without agency and waiting for white saviours, but they didn’t. I’m not going to cover the reasons why that’s important. The reasons demand much more care, attention, space and critique than I’m capable of providing, but you could start reading up on them with these two pieces:
Media Diversified - Charity, Philanthropy and Media Stereotypes: Africa’s new colonialists?
BBC News - Africa image harming aid effort, says charity Oxfam
The point of this piece, with its admittedly *very* narrow focus, is that charities can help to communicate the extraordinary work they do by juxtaposing it with the ordinary, every-day, and comparably irrelevant challenges that we face.
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