Doctors Without Borders launched a short video to show in movie theaters in England. It’s trying to break new ground, but misses the mark.

The group (Médecins Sans Frontières as it is known elsewhere) said it decided to “make a deliberate move away from some traditional charity advertising which can tend to focus on images of starving children.”

The clip shows a desolate, war-ravaged home and the viewer can hear the pitiful sound of a child crying. “We have deliberately left the child nameless and not identified the country in order to protect his identity and to encourage viewers to realise that violence of this sort occurs beyond just the borders of a single country,” the group said on its site.

The video has a few written statements superimposed on the image of the house about the horrors that happened to the child’s family. The video is very emotional. Upsetting. Disturbing.

If that was the point of the video was to upset people, well done.

But the video ends with the statement, “We can’t operate without your help.” It sounds as if they want people to donate or take action in some way. That’s where this video misses the mark.

The few lines of text tell us very little about what Doctors Without Borders does. The first line tells us that the doctors are treating a five-year-old boy. The second line tells us his sisters were raped, and the third line tells us his parents were killed. The little boy is crying as doctors treat him, and crying at the end of the video.

His injuries, whatever they may be, seem minor in comparison to the devastation that has been inflicted on his personal world. There is nothing (as far as I can tell) that Doctors Without Borders can do to help his sisters, his dead parents, or the little boy now that he is an orphan.  If I give, what good will it do?

This is an example of a common mistake that fundraisers make. They tell the story of a service recipient, but they concentrate on the person’s problems while forgetting to explain how their organization helped the person overcome those problems.  I think people inside an organization are often too close to the situation. What they do everyday is obvious to them, but they forget it’s not obvious to the reader.

How your organization helps your clients should be the main part of every appeal message.

The Doctors Without Borders video protected the identity of the child and kept the location of the war zone general, which were two of its goals. It also had an emotional component. Unfortunately, it was off message.

What do you think?