In May 2016, Channel 4 launched a new annual competition, the Channel 4 Annual Diversity in Advertising Award, the award being £1mi of the broadcaster’s commercial airtime for the best ad campaign featuring diversity.
(Australia broadcaster, SBS, runs a similar award programme. The Diversity Works Challenge awards AU$1m in free airtime for the best ad campaign featuring diversity, and was won last year by KWP!.)
The aim of both the awards is to improve diversity in advertising. Channel 4 has decided to focus on a different area of diversity each year. The 2107 brief was to embrace invisible diversity. It was won by Lloyds Bank and created by adam&eve DDB.
The campaign, made up of two 60-second films which feature a version of the Who Am I game, launched on mental health awareness Time To Talk Day, February 1. Celebrities such as Professor Green, Jeremy Paxman, Rachel Riley and Alex Brooker, members of the public and Lloyds Bank colleagues were given sticky notes to wear on their foreheads and paired up as they tried to guess which disability or mental health issue they were wearing.
The game – that is, the players’ questions – highlighted common misconceptions about living with invisible disabilities:
“Am I going to live?” “Will I ever get better?” “Are people going to say, ‘This guy is nuts?’” “Is it my fault?”
The campaign will run on Channel 4 and its on-demand platform All 4, and be promoted on social media using the hashtag #GetTheInsideOut.
Mat Goff, chief executive officer at adam&eveDDB, commented, “The hidden nature of some of these mental health problems mean that they are not talked about as much as they should be, and people often don’t know how to start the conversation. This campaign, thanks to the commitment of Channel 4 and Lloyds Bank and all the people brave enough to speak up in it, will help start thousands of conversations at home and at work that otherwise might not have happened.”
Lloyds has stated that it will use its own money to extend the campaign beyond the £1m of airtime given by Channel 4, so that the campaign will run on other media and eventually on other channels.
Coinciding with the campaign launch is the release of with a Lloyds and Mental Health UK survey, conducted by YouGov, which reveals 75% of people still think there is a stigma attached to mental health in the UK, while 88% feel society needs to do more to better understand mental health issues.
Lloyds Bank has raised £4.8m for Mental Health UK so far, enabling the charity to launch the Mental Health and Money Advice Service, which is dedicated to helping people with mental health problems understand the links between their finance and mental health.
Volvo was originally crowned the winner of the Channel 4 competition but it pulled out in October, claiming it had not approved the ad prior to its agency Grey submitting it.
The inaugural Channel 4 diversity competition was won by Mars brand, Maltesers. The campaign was created by AMV BBDO and the ads, which made their debut during the Rio Paralympics and depicted people with disabilities in everyday scenarios.
How AMV BBDO won AU$1.75 million in free advertising for Maltesers
