2020 WINNER
EA Sports named winner of Channel 4’s 2020 £1m Diversity in Advertising Award
EA Sports and its creative agency Adam&eveDDB are crowned the winners of The 2020 Diversity in Advertising Award which is focussed on the authentic portrayal of UK Black Asian and Minority Ethnic cultures in advertising this year.
The leading games publisher wins the grand prize of £1m of commercial airtime and will launch their winning campaign on Channel 4 in 2021.
The winner was decided at a socially distanced judging day held at London’s Roundhouse, with Lloyds Bank (MediaCom x GUAP Studios) also being awarded a ‘highly commended’ accolade. For the first time ever, Channel 4 is also awarding an enhanced package of £350,000 of free advertising airtime to the brand for this campaign in a match-funding arrangement.
Runners up were Boots (Ogilvy UK), #MerkyBooks (PlayNice), Royal Navy (Engine) and Tesco (in-house entry), all which will be awarded up to £250,000 of match funded airtime – reflecting Channel 4’s ambition to encourage as many of the pitched ideas to make it to air as possible.
The theme of this year’s award was chosen following new research commissioned by 4Sales which finds there is a universal lack of authentic portrayal of people from all Black Asian and Minority Ethnic communities, their backgrounds, lives and cultures in TV advertising.
Each year the competition focuses on a different area of diversity to encourage the ad industry to embrace inclusive creative campaigns – and further Channel 4’s commitment to reflecting the cultural diversity of Britain beyond its editorial content and into the ad breaks. It forms an important part of the broadcaster’s six-point commitment to be a driver of anti-racism in the creative industries and improve black and minority ethnic representation.
Matt Salmon, Channel 4’s Sales Director and Chair of Judges said: “We created the £1m Diversity in Advertising award to inspire lasting change in the industry’s approach to the representation of diverse groups in advertising and we’ve seen the many benefits of this through previous winners’ campaigns. EA Sports are deserving winners of this year’s prize and we really hope each of the runners-up takes advantage our significant match-funding offer to bring their entries to life.”
Mat Goff, Joint CEO at adam&eveDDB, said: "Huge thanks to C4 for challenging the industry once again with this brilliant competition. We are delighted to be announced as the winners and to get the chance to work with EA Sports to bring such an exciting and important campaign to life."
Background
The Channel 4 Diversity In Advertising Award offers an annual £1 million airtime prize for a brand who best responds to our creative brief encouraging greater representation of diverse communities in advertising - our 2020 award scheme has now closed to entries for the shortlisting process to take place.
The award is an established industry scheme designed to encourage greater and more authentic representation of diverse UK communities through mainstream UK television advertising. The importance of doing this is two-fold;
- Research shows that diverse communities feel like they aren’t accurately or sufficiently represented on screen in UK advertising.
- Omitting diverse communities from advertising means that non-diverse communities are not exposed to a true reflection of the multicultural society we live in.
Since 2016, Channel 4 has sought to encourage the UK advertising community to be more inclusive in their campaigns by awarding an annual £1million airtime prize. The prize is awarded to the brand who best responds to our revolving brief to create an advertisement which promotes their product/service in a manner which authentically represents a specific diverse community.
Whilst the winning brand receives a £1million advertising campaign for their commercial, Channel 4 also offers to match-fund (up to £250k limit each) the other shortlisted entries – with the motivation being to get as many representative campaigns on air as possible.
The overall ambition of the award is to get more representative advertising campaigns on air and encourage greater inclusive thinking within the creative process behind the campaigns.
For further information, or if you have any questions or queries, please email us at 4sales@channel4.co.uk
2020 Brief
The 2020 Channel 4 Diversity In Advertising Award is looking for brands and agencies to submit campaign ideas for their products/services which accurately, authentically and prominently celebrate Black Asian and Minority Ethnic communities and their culture. The communities covered within this group are diverse, so we are not looking for campaign ideas that aim to cover the whole of the Black Asian and Minority Ethnic communities, but instead we want entrants to focus in on a specific culture, and produce an advert which celebrates and represents the culture and its community effectively – whilst achieving the core marketing objective too, of course!
Judges are looking for the core campaign idea to be a 30-60 second TV spot, which would run on Channel 4 in May 2021. If further spots executions are deemed appropriate for your idea, these are welcomed.
Ideas must primarily remain an advertisement for your product/service. This award scheme does not exist to campaign about issues or lobby for political change, it exists to drive everyday change in mainstream UK advertising through normalisation. You should always ensure that the idea drives your original marketing objective(s) – whether that be sales increases, brand awareness etc.
However, the judges are looking for authentic portrayals of diverse cultures within your ad construct. Let us see your product/service in the context of a multi-cultural Britain.
The prize is awarded based on the creative idea that the panel feel would work the best on screen for mass-market audiences, regardless of the audiences’ race or cultural background. We are not looking for ads which exclusively appeal to a segment of UK society – the scheme exists to promote and celebrate a diverse UK to all audiences.
For further information, or if you have any questions or queries, please email us at 4sales@channel4.co.uk
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Prior Winners
The Channel 4 Diversity In Advertising Award has been running since 2016 and has so far awarded a total prize value of £4million of airtime. Here are our prior winners...
In 2016, the year of the Rio Paralympics, the award focused on the representation of disabled people in advertising, with the winner being Maltesers, who created a series of adverts featuring characters with various visible disabilities.
In 2017, the focus turned to non-visible disabilities, and the airtime was awarded to a Lloyds Bank campaign which depicted numerous mental health conditions including anxiety and depression.
2018 was a year where #MeToo, Gender Pay Gaps and a centennial celebration of some women’s right to vote was high in the public’s consciousness, so focus turned to the representation of women in advertising, as gender stereotyping was found to be a huge issue. The Royal Air Force won the competition, with a female recruitment ad that turned gender stereotyping on its head.
In 2019, a large Channel 4 research project identified LGBT+ communities as those who experience the most stereotyping and under-representation within advertising. Starbucks were the ultimate winner of the award, with a creative execution that portrayed the experiences of a trans character.
In 2020, our attention turned to the representation and portrayal of ethnicity on screen. The award challenged brands to explore the representation of a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic community in UK culture and was won by a pitch from EA Sports for their FIFA 2021 product.