WaterAid Advertisements

Compare how audiences are positioned by the representations in the WaterAid advertisements: Claudia sings sunshine on a rainy day and No choice. 

WaterAid is a non-profitable charity organisation that works with communities to improve access to clean water and sanitation for good hygiene in developing third world countries. In many of their campaigns and advertisements, it is said that "650 million people still don't have access to water" to show that their goal is to decrease the numbers with the help of charitable donations from their audiences and support groups. "WaterAid receives 100% of donations", which is significant since people are aware that the donations go directly towards the actual cause ,this eliminates concerns about how much is going to the charity. 

The Sunshine advert explores a more positive and refreshing representation which moves away from the typical emotional charity advertisements such as the No choice ad which they released in 2013. We can see that they wanted to have a different approach towards their audiences by producing something unexpected. This is reflected by the use of diegetic sounds coming from the girl singing a pop cultural song happily while carrying an empty bucket. Which would be unusual to the audience since for decades we have repeatedly been presented with the charity advertisements that go along similar lines such as: a child of poverty which is the main focus, the low conditions they live in, people in villages suffering. However, as for the No Choice advert throughout its narrative there are more stereotypical melancholic representations of people suffering without water particularly children. This is an hegemonic ideology of a dominant reading where the audience would already assume that the eastern society lacks essential needs compared to the western world. It can position the audience to feel more superior since we have the power to give to those who are inferior to us. However, it would give the audience the feeling fatigue since these sorts of ads are commonly presented throughout history.  This would be because these sort of adverts would pressure the audience to donate but guilt tripping them into feeling pity toward people suffering through poverty. This is done by the repetition of the term "No Choice"which implies to the children and people in the advert since the only way for them to survive is by drinking unsanitary water from lakes/ponds/rivers unless we do something about it.
There is an essence of binary opposition against the western and eastern lifestyles presented in both adverts; such as how the eastern society not having the same facilities as us. An example would be from the Sun shine advert where the radio playing in the beginning can be denoted that it is part of the western culture since we are more advanced in technology- however Claudia is the one singing to entertain herself. This gives a clear difference between our societies where the eastern society uses the world around them to entertain themselves and adjust to what they have, as for the western world would take advantages of the privileges we have. In addition to that, in the beginning the western world is seem as a gloomy and miserable place where the rain would seem dreadful, this is transitioned to the next shot of a dry yet a bright location which is assumed to be the eastern world. In the no choice advert, there is an equilibrium of the normal life of poverty which changes to the affect of the donations given to supply water for them. The tone of the events change as well where people were miserable to becoming more happier and healthier which is controlled by us as the audience since we have the power to make that change.