The Effectiveness of Advertising of Charities: the Application of Cultural Values(Case Study: Advertising of the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation)

Success in attracting the participation of donors through promotional activities is one of the important challenges of charities, and advertising is one of the most important promotion tools used for this purpose. According to professional principles, for an advertisement to be effective, it must be attractive to the audience and reflect common values (Giddens, 2004, pp. 55-56). Previous research on charity advertising shows that the effectiveness of a charity advertisement is influenced by the alignment between the values included in a charity advertisement and the values that donors adhere to (Wymer and Gross, 2023, p. 23) and the congruence between the values included in the charity advertisement and the values of the target society of the ad have an effect on the effectiveness of the ad and the willingness of the audience to volunteer in charity activities (Bennett, 2013, p. 135); So, it is very important to ensure that the published advertisement affirms highlights and reinforces the cultural values of the target society. Therefore, the present study investigates the effect of using 14 cultural values, including collectivism, economy, family, individualism, patriotism, respect for the elderly, security, tradition, nature, work, and kindness (taken from Cheng's classification (1997)) and logical appeal, fear appeal, and reassuring appeal (taken from the research of Masoodipoor and Kheiri (2013)) on the effectiveness of charity advertisements published by the Imam Khomeini Relief foundation of Qom. 

In terms of purpose, the present research is of applied type, and in terms of method, it is descriptive research that was conducted in two qualitative and quantitative stages. First, using interpretive content analysis, the cultural values included in 18 advertisements published by the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation of Qom during one season were identified. For this purpose, the said advertisement in the form of a CD along with a questionnaire and a general description of the cultural values that the researchers intended to examine were delivered to 5 experts active in the field of marketing and advertising who were willing to cooperate with the researchers. They were asked to identify what cultural values were included in each ad. Any ad that at least three experts believed used a cultural value was considered an ad containing that cultural value and each ad could contain several cultural values. In the second stage of the research, by conducting a field study, the opinions of 100 Qommi audiences about the various aspects of the effectiveness of each advertisement were measured, and the average rating of the effectiveness of each advertisement and each cultural value was determined using Friedman's test. The reason for using the Friedman test is that the sample is correlated because each person answered the same questions for all 18 ads. This test corresponds to the repeated analysis of variance test in which a subject is measured several times (Ahmadi Kohanali and Chamani, 2012, p. 106). 

The results of the first stage of the research showed that the most frequent value used in the reviewed advertisements is kindness, which is present in 13 of the 18 reviewed advertisements; after that, religion (reassurance) in (6 ads), family (5 ads), individualism, religion (logical) and economy (4 ads) and security (3 ads) are the most frequent values in the investigated ads. However, according to the results of the research in the second stage, the most influential cultural values on the effectiveness of advertisements, in order of effectiveness, were family, work, individualism, patriotism, religious (logical) and collectivism, kindness, respect for the Elderly, religious (fear), nature, economic, security, religious (reassuring) and tradition. 

Designing the advertisement message according to the beliefs, preferences, and desires of the audience has an impact on the success of the advertisement. Accuracy in the ranking of advertisements and the ranking of cultural values used in them can provide good evidence to confirm this hypothesis that the cultural values included in charity advertisements affect the effectiveness of advertisements. The most frequent value used in the reviewed advertisements is kindness, which is natural considering the context of the research. Charity advertisements often combine rational and emotional content and attempt to evoke feelings of empathy among the audience for the people the charity is trying to help, and research shows that this technique is effective (Wymer and Gross, 2023, p. 14). The reason for this rank is the existence of this value in the majority of the ads that were investigated, which made it unable to create differentiation. The results of the research showed that while the values of affection, religion (reassuring), family, individualism, religion (logical), economy, and security are the most frequent in the investigated advertisements; Using the values of family, work, individualism, patriotism, religion (logical), and collectivism in advertisements have led to more effective advertisements. Considering the high costs of advertising and the limited resources of charities, charity marketers and advertising companies that advertise for charities need to be more careful in using cultural values in advertising. The time-consuming nature of completing the questionnaires and, as a result, the reduction of the respondents' participation rate, as well as the comparison of the effectiveness of advertisements from different media, are limitations of this research that should be taken into account when applying the research findings.