Well, let’s start with the obvious: the image of the boy. This is no ordinary photograph of a child. Those grey green eyes blast you out of your complacency as you flick through the magazine. They’re big, in close up and they break the fourth wall. Yet Kiran Master’s image is not just about the first initial blow it lands on you as a reader; there’s incredible subtlety there too. Notice how the boy’s eyes are pink rimmed, as if he’s tired, strung out - maybe he’s just been crying, or, more likely given the copy, he’s just delivered a defiant, expletive heavy outburst. It’s an image that feels inescapably authentic while also being formally flawless - the kid’s clothes, his eyes, even the background are all embedded in the same limited range of greens which counterpoint perfectly with the pink of his eyes and lips.

But it’s in the copy where this ad becomes something special.

As is so often the case with great copywriting, the writer Nick Gill has chosen to go to work on an uncomfortable truth: even the most challenging of kids are worth believing in. The opening paragraph contains no less than four fuck off’s. It’s almost as if the ad itself is defying you to turn away, just as many people turn away from these troublesome and troubled kids. But even if you do turn away and get only as far as that first paragraph and the tagline before flicking the page, the ad still makes sense.

The resilient, indeed those most likely to support Barnardo’s, persevere. And it’s in the second paragraph, grey text this time, set in a lighter weight, that the writer uses the second person - ‘You’ - for the first time. The appeal gets personal.

We’re invited to share in Barnardo’s position with a simple but subtle conditional that doesn’t presume our position: ‘But if, like us, you believe …’ Notice too how jargon and cliché is avoided with that devastatingly simple string of five single syllable words: ‘no child is born bad’. There is the plosive alliteration of ‘play pass the parcel with a young person’s life’ - like all great copy these are words that are good to read out loud. Then finally we finish with a flourish. See how Gill builds crescendo in the final few lines with a sentence of two words: ‘We listen’. Followed by two slightly longer sentences of four words, and then a twenty five word sentence of three clauses which builds and builds before setting us down lightly but inescapably on the line ‘Believe in children Barnardo’s’.

And don’t even get me started on the brilliant use of negative space …

Agency - BBH

Art Director - Mark Reddy

Copywriter - Nick Gill

Photographer - Kiran Master

Typographer - Chris Chapman

Creative Director - Nick Gill

Why is this Great Ad Great? #1