After Volvo's U-turn, Lloyds reveals the ad that’s won Channel 4’s Diversity in Advertising award
Lloyds has launched the campaign that secured £1m in airtime as part of Channel 4’s Diversity in Advertising award, after original winner Volvo pulled out.
The advert – which had to focus on non-visible disability per the brief set by Channel 4 – features celebrities including Professor Green, Victoria Pendleton, Jeremy Paxman, Rachel Riley, and Ade Adepitan.
It aims to highlight misconceptions about living with a non-visible disability by showing the celebrities, as well as members of the public, who play a variation of the ‘Who am I?’ sticky-note guessing game.
The campaign was created by Adam and Eve DDB and also saw Lloyds work with long-term charity partner, Mental Health UK. Together, they are promoting a movement called ‘Get The Inside Out’, which has encouraged people to speak about mental health and inspire those living with a condition to speak up about mental health.
The campaign will run exclusively on Channel 4, as well as its on-demand platform All 4, with a mix of 60-second and 10-second creative executions.
“It was a really inspiring brief. But not an easy one. Last year’s on physical disability was great but we had to show a non-physical disability on a visual medium… that was a real challenge. The idea is really strong and provoking,” Ros King, director of marketing innovation and communications told The Drum.
However, turning it around was equally challenging. Lloyds was only informed it had won the airtime in November after Volvo withdrew from the competition, claiming it hadn’t been informed of its entry by creative agency Grey London.
King declined to comment on the decision by Volvo to walk away from the prize, saying only that Lloyds was “utterly thrilled” to have been selected in its place.
“It’s been a rollercoaster, but a lot of fun,” she said. “We’d normally have a bit longer for big broadcast [campaigns] … but we can do really fast turnaround on creative work.”
Mars’ Malteasers was the winner of the first £1m fund and claimed its efforts had a lasting impact on the brand, which saw a sales bump of over 8% leading it to proclaim the ad as its “most successful campaign ever.”
Lloyds will be looking at the commercial outcomes of the campaign, but King said the main metric for success will be around the mental health agenda.
“What will make this work for me is if people feel like they can open up about mental health. Our number one objective is to encourage people to talk about it and normalize it a bit more,” she added.
Research the brand released in tandem with the campaign found that as many as 75% of people believe there is a stigma in Britain attached to people with mental health conditions and almost three quarters (74%) think the average person would be unwilling to discuss their own mental health issues.
“Producing an advert that puts non-visible disabilities at its heart was a demanding brief and it’s been a real pleasure working with Lloyds and Adam and Eve DDB as they developed a fantastic new campaign that makes people think more profoundly about mental health,” continued Channel 4’s sales director Jonathan Allan.
“If this campaign can encourage the public and advertisers to think a little harder about all aspects of diversity, it can help make a real difference to people’s lives.”