How do you make a banker TV ad that lasts?

 

You know that feeling. It’s the night before a pitch. Peter Muffett decides to email Michael Stipe in the hope that REM will give you their first ever permission to use one of their tracks on TV? Amazingly, the lovely Mr Stipe says yes (he is, after all, an animal lover).

And so, we pitched our first ever fundraising DRTV appeal to Richard Brooks and his team at WSPA. We won the pitch. The appeal performed brilliantly, and like all fabulous DRTV continued to do so for 16 years – that’s not just about the creative, but also about the minutiae of granular data analytics and relentless media optimisation. Here we are in 2025, still working with WAP.

But why is Eyes so powerful? (And powerful enough to have performed strongly across the UK, Canada, Australia, and a range of European and South-East Asian countries).

  • The eyes have it!  Of course, eye contact engages the viewer and draw you in, right from the opening line: ‘animals’ eyes can be a window to a life of brutal suffering. Suffering we think it’s wrong to even show you…’

  • The script and footage literally change your brain chemistry, triggering cortisol and oxytocin as we evoke a powerful sense of jeopardy and inspire the urge to help…

  • And we use one of DRTV’s most powerful tools – the imagination of the viewer, as that opening line prompts them to wonder what it is that is so bad that we don’t want to show them.

All of the above, plus the humanity and compassion of the track which gives the viewer a short-cut to emotional engagement, make this an easy choice as the first of our 21@21 to mark DTV Group’s 21st year of using the power of film to serve purposeful causes worldwide.

 

Bio

Derek Humphries is a director and creative strategist at DTV Group and helps causes worldwide communicate and fundraise with undiluted inspiration.

 
Debora Montesoro