2016 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

To tackle prejudice we proposed something very simple: get six strangers to sit around a table during Ramadan, and talk. The only difference being that it would be done in the dark. From the moment conversation started, each person immediately painted a picture in their mind of what the other might look like. Later, we turned on the lights and to each person’s amazement they realised that the people around the table didn’t look how they’d expected. They’d discovered just how much prejudice can affect perception and that in order to see people in a new light sometimes the best solution, was to turn it off.

Creative Execution

The brief was to get six people from completely different backgrounds – different races and religions. Half of them had to ideally be social influencers because of the amount of reach they had with audiences online. The biggest challenge though was to find people who weren’t actors but comfortable in front of a camera. We wanted the conversation to be unscripted and as natural as possible. An even greater challenge was to find people who, the moment you look at them, seem to be one thing but the instant you got to know them had so much depth. Put simply: their appearance versus their background needed to be black and white. Our final cast consisted of: A marketer than was a heavy metal rocker A fully tattooed Indian man who enjoys writing, reading and has spoken at TED talks A westerner that was fluent in Arabic An Emirati that was an expert cook A professional skydiver that was in a wheelchair The film needed to be shot not only during Ramadan, but also within the first week so it had time to spread online. The first week is also the most important for Muslims as it’s exclusively spent with family. So to find Muslims that were available was a challenge as well. After the launch of the online film, our TED talks speaker went on to broadcast his experience, views and thoughts of the stunt - completely of his own accord. Acquiring new fans and media coverage.