Volvo UK and Grey London – the latter of which has temporarily rebranded as Valenstein & Fatt to honour its Jewish founders – have won Channel 4’s £1 million Diversity in Advertising Award.
The prize translates as a million quid’s worth of airtime on Channel 4 where Volvo’s ad campaign, which is focused on non-visible disability, will be broadcast.
The brand was one of seven finalists, which included BT and AMV BBDO; Ford and GTB; Panasonic and Brave; Bose and Valenstein & Fatt and Marks & Spencer and Valenstein & Fatt. The campaigns featured a range of non-visible disabilities such as depression, Alzheimer’s, autism and deafness.
Channel 4 will offer the other six finalists match-funded commercial airtime if they produce the creative ideas which secured them a place in the final.
“This is a really important award which I hope will lead to a genuine step change in the advertising industry and see it embrace diversity more widely,” said Jonathan Allan, Channel 4’s sales director.
“We set a really tough brief this year – putting non-visible disabilities at the heart of a campaign – and judging from the range, creativity and sheer quality of the finalists’ ideas, there’s a wealth of opportunity for advertisers and their creative teams to explore in this area.
“It was yet again an incredibly emotional and uplifting experience to judge the finalists’ pitches and each of them deserved their place at the table. We hope that everyone will think a little harder about all aspects of diversity when creating their advertising as a result of this competition.”
The Channel 4 Annual Diversity in Advertising Award is a long term commitment from the broadcaster to improve diversity in advertising every year until at least 2020.
Each year the prize will focus on a different area of diversity to encourage the ad industry to embrace inclusive campaigns and extend Channel 4’s commitment towards diversity beyond its editorial content and into the ad breaks.
Caroline Pay, CCO at Valenstein & Fatt/Grey London, added: “Proud does not even begin to describe how we feel about winning this prize.
“It’s a big deal for Valenstein & Fatt, a big deal for Volvo, but above all else a chance to change the way people with non-visible disabilities are represented in the media.”
The Volvo campaign will be broadcast in the autumn.
