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Comic Relief - Social litmus test on charitable giving in the recession

March 11, 2009 | Written by Lucy Yeatman

Friday sees the twelfth Red Nose Day celebrated in Britain for Comic Relief.

Last year’s Red Nose Day smashed all records, raising a massive £40.2m. I will be intrigued to see whether this year’s event will come anywhere close to meeting that total, given that it will be the first large scale live telethon fundraising event in the UK since the recession hit.

We’ve already seen a vast amount of publicity in the run up to the event, mobilising the population to take part. The messages of Comic Relief have always juxtaposed the light-hearted with the serious, but this year - in my mind - the tone and messaging seem very different to previous years. I’ve noticed that the strategy is always to reserve the hardcore appeal films until the night, but this year there is little mention of money, charity and especially Africa. Take for example, the coverage achieved surrounding the expedition that nine celebrities embarked upon up Mount Kilimanjaro. When I searched for coverage around the expedition 99% of my results were surrounding the gruelling climb, Fearne Cotton missing her lip gloss and Ashley Cole misbehaving back home. There is less mention of malaria and Tanzania.

Undoubtedly the recession will have fed into communications strategies and will have been thought of as a major challenge for organisers for many months. It is a tough ask to promote large scale giving, especially for overseas projects when we are faced daily with headlines of more redundancies, rising UK poverty rates and economic turmoil. Could this be why the focus of this year’s event seems to have resulted as more inward looking than previous years?

With this in mind, I’ll be interested to see how things play out on the night. Will appeal films have a new focus to better suit the attitudes of our recession hit society? Will the recession be mentioned? And will the focus fall more on the UK than Africa? I think that Comic Relief 2009 will be the ultimate litmus test gauging British society’s attitudes towards the developing world in times of recession. I will be very intrigued to see whether the nation’s generosity will stand up in adverse times. Let’s see whether we’ll come anywhere near to meeting that pre-recession £40.2m.

Tags: Charitable giving, Charity, Comic Relief, Malaria, Mount Kilimanjaro, Recession, Red Nose Day

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