Under the glare of a surgeon’s lamp, gloved hands sterilise a needle. A small child flinches as surgical steel touches skin; the sound of cold metal grates the nerves. Seconds later, the child is marked for life, and the image fades from the screen.

If you thought you knew what to expect from NGO commercials, think again.

With a cinematic feel and an unswervingly calm voiceover, Transparency International’s new television advertisement for International Anti-Corruption Day hits hard. In the advert, a young child, clearly not more than 11 or 12 years old, is being tattooed. The figure she is branded with - 115 000 000 - represents the number of children who lose out on education as a result of corruption. The tattoo intends to get under the viewer's skin too, and the message is clear: Corruption marks children, families and societies for life.

In the past few years, Transparency International has released a commercial to mark the United Nation’s International Anti-Corruption Day on 9 December. The challenge for TI, and other non-profit organisations, is to relay a complex message on a shoestring budget. And with the number of other UN International Days currently totalling 61, how does an organisation cut through the clutter to make the greatest impact?

“We wanted this ad to be emotionally powerful and to really stick in people’s minds,” says Jesse Garcia, co-ordinator of the campaign. “That is why we went for a more cinematic look, and something with a bit of shock value. It takes a hard-hitting look at the long-term costs of corruption for its victims.”

Stepping outside development imagery familiar to the NGO community may be progressive, but it is also risky. The publicity generated by controversy has to be weighed against the risk of upsetting supporters. But Garcia is confident the darkness of the campaign is justified and works in its favour.

“I think those who have come face-to-face with corruption in its most brutal forms would not find this portrayal excessive. Corruption hurts people," he says. "I don’t think we need to dilute this message.”

Increasingly, NGOs and charities are daring to shock their audience, and to use new forms of marketing. Whether it is TI’s ’marked for life’ advertisement, a comedy cartoon or an animated banner, if it sparks conversation and can easily be transmitted by email or linked on a blog, then it is likely to be effective.

Many of these new NGO campaigns fall under the broad heading of viral marketing, or ‘virals’. Viral marketing is based on the idea that people will pass on interesting or funny content, and in doing so, spread information or brand awareness in much the same way as a computer virus spreads. ‘Virals’ are thought to have started with the email provider Hotmail in the 1990s. Hotmail’s practice of adding its own advertisements to the bottom of senders’ outgoing emails allowed its reach to extend exponentially.

Speaking on viral marketing, TI’s Fundraising Co-ordinator Conrad Zellman notes the risk such promotion could entail. “You need something funny or extreme, and that’s a gamble.” These types of campaigns, however, also can be remarkably effective, leading many civil society groups to take the risk.

The environmental group Greenpeace wanted to put pressure on the Canadian government, who it saw as blocking a UN moratorium on deep-sea bottom trawling. Canadian Minister for Fisheries and Oceans Loyola Hearn had announced that the country would not be supporting a blanket ban on such trawling, and, to Greenpeace, this was a major blow to the moratorium itself. Their marketing team hit on the idea of producing a short film based on a spoof of the song “Blame Canada” from South Park: the movie and a viral campaign was born.

The short film is a very effective parody of the American television cartoon series South Park, with all the usual swearing and bickering, and ended with the modified South Park song. Despite being nearly 10 years old, South Park is still controversial, upsetting everyone from politicians to the Catholic Church to Hollywood actors on a regular basis. So, is attaching a serious campaign to something that polarises the public tricky to pull off?

“No, not really,” says Sari Tolvanen, the campaign’s co-ordinator. “There was such strong support for the moratorium from both the scientific community and governments that strong message was expected and needed."

Greenpeace’s strong – if potentially risky – tactic appeared to work. The video was aired on MTV, and received generous press coverage in Canada. In the end, the Canadian government did end up compromising on the deep-sea moratorium, although as Tolvanen notes, it is impossible to know how much is owed to the campaign.

Another benefit of the film was its low cost. According to Tolvanen, it spread further than any other aspect of their bottom trolling campaign and, for the least amount of money.

This smart use of web marketing has had a major impact on the way many non-profit organisations communicate with those outside their sector. If a message about a deep-sea moratorium – not the sexiest subject – can end up on MTV as a result, then virals are genuinely revolutionary.

Clearly NGOs, charities and activist groups deal with heavy subject matter that viral marketing alone cannot adequately express. But alternative methods such as viral marketing or controversial advertisements can be an important dimension to a larger campaign. In October, Amnesty International revived its famous Secret Policeman’s Ball, a celebrity-studded comedy and music event that the organisation has sporadically organised since the 1970s. This year, Amnesty added another dimension to the event including blogs, podcasts, banner downloads and virals into their marketing.

“This was the first time we have done it in such a comprehensive way,” says Amnesty International Press Officer Sarah Greene. “The viral films were very well circulated: the podcast reached number 1 in the UK podcast charts.”

Amnesty, like TI, has a complex set of ideas to promote. The Secret Policeman’s Ball has been an incredibly effective way of giving the issue of human rights added sparkle. But the use of snappy web techniques proved to add even more. Much as the use of celebrity endorsement is an effective tactic, providing banners for people to download to their websites and gossiping about the Ball’s progress in a blog is likely to have reached more people than the concert itself.

Like virals, the attraction of downloadable banners is in their simplicity. A web banner is just that – an advert at the top of a webpage in the shape of a banner, sometimes with eye-catching animation. Providing these as downloads means that anyone can easily download the banner and put it on their blog – a very effective, cheap way of spreading the word. This is something Amnesty found very successful - people who would not usually devote much time to human rights became exposed to the group’s message, through a simple form of new technology.

Accessibility certainly needs to be maintained where NGOs are concerned. The issues are complex and organisations are coming up with new and innovative ways to translate their key messages to different audiences in different ways. Much of Transparency International’s work involves technical codes and international conventions – areas where public understanding and interest are questionable. These valuable tools need to be translated into a bigger picture to make them meaningful to the general public.

This is the way TI’s Anti-Corruption Day television spot tackles its subject. Corruption is such an abstract concept – okay, corruption hurts people, but explaining how that is tangible can be difficult. Corruption keeps children from attending school. That is something that will leave its mark on a child, a family and a society for life. As the image of a brutally marked child fades, a powerful message takes its place.

“We want to reach people who will never hear or care about conventions, procurement or codes of conduct,” says Garcia. “But there needs to be an understanding that corruption hurts people, that it can be stopped, and that there are people out there who are already fighting it. That’s the real message of hope.”

Think you can’t fight corruption? Think again!

Go to www.transparency.org and click on the banner to see the television spot.