First look: Lloyds Bank’s award-winning Channel 4 diversity campaign

The winning ad campaign of the Channel 4 £1m Diversity in Advertising Award launches tonight, coinciding with mental health awareness ‘Time To Talk’ day.

The Lloyds Bank TV ad features celebrities, members of the public and Lloyds staff playing a variation of the ‘Who am I?’ sticky-note guessing game to explore the misconceptions about living with a non-visible disability.

Channel 4’s Diversity in Advertising Award was set up by the broadcaster to improve diversity in advertising. As the award winner, Lloyds Bank received £1m worth of advertising airtime with the broadcaster. The competition invited entrants to put forward creative ideas featuring non-visible disabilities.

“We’re immensely proud to have won the Channel 4 Diversity in Advertising Award,” said Catherine Kehoe, managing director, group brands and marketing, Lloyds Banking Group.

“We recognise that anyone can be affected by mental health problems and the more we can do to normalise the conversation, the better it is for everyone. Our advert aims to get people talking about mental health as it affects 1 in 4 of our customers, colleagues; everyone”

The campaign, which also runs on All 4, will be launched in final episode of Hunted on Thursday evening and features Professor Green (pictured), Jeremy Paxman, Rachel Riley and Alex Brooker.

To coincide with the campaign’s launch, Lloyds Bank and Mental Health UK have also produced a survey that shows that although improvements have been made in how society thinks about mental health, 75 per cent of people still think there is a stigma attached to the issue.

Meanwhile, 88 per cent feel society needs to do more to better understand mental health issues.

The survey also reveals that 67 per cent of respondents think people are more comfortable talking about mental health conditions now than they were five years ago. And people feel that the four main factors behind this change were – celebrities talking about mental health (70 per cent); media stories about mental health (70 per cent); societal change (68 per cent); and charities raising awareness (56 per cent).

Lloyds Bank was not the original winner of the diversity fund – the business and its agency, Adam & Eve/DDB, only picked up the prize after the original winner, Volvo, withdrew, saying that its agency Grey London had not had the idea approved.