Bias is a tricky problem. Hard to prove. Even harder to eradicate. A campaign in the UK has taken up the challenge. Agency Worth Your While has created the campaign for People Like Us, a not-for-profit that supports UK media, marketing and communications professionals from Black, Asian, Mixed Race and minoritised ethnic backgrounds is exposing the inequalities bias creates on pay, job prospects and workplace treatment for ethnic groups.

The campaign, #NameTheBias, launched on Ethnicity Pay Gap Day, January 8, with the screening of its hero film at House of Lords and the Houses of Parliament and calls for mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting. The film features a spoken word performance by Bangladeshi-British singer, Yasmin Ali, who also contributed to its writing, and it was directed by Iranian-born filmmaker, Naghmeh Pour.

The campaign is built on 2019 research at the University of Oxford that shows candidates with ethnic minority names must lodge 60% more job applications than British-born candidates for callbacks and the film is being supported in digital and OOH, plus social influencer activation within the spoken word community and the People Like Us network.

Credits
Client: People Like Us
Co-Founders: Darain Faraz & Sheeraz Gulsher

Creative Agency: Worth Your While
Creative Directors & Partners: Tim Pashen & Lukas Lund
Art Director: Katrine Winblad
Copywriters: Yasmin Ali & Tim Pashen
Creatives: Jakob Hjulström & Malou Ruotsalainen

Chief Strategy Officer: Tali Madsen
Account Manager: Celina Ranum Aagaard
Project Manager: Christine Lorentzen
Account Director & CEO: Morten Ingemann
Typographer & Consultant Design Director: Craig Ward

Production Company: new—land
Director: Naghmeh Pour
Executive Producers: Sara Samsøe & Thor Brammer
Producer: Sofia Klitgaard
Production Manager: Julie Seifert
Production Assistant: Ida Lindemann
DOP: Jasper Spanning
Editor: Nik Kohler
Sound Engineer: Kevin Koch
Photographer: Jasper Spanning