2022 Winners & Shortlists

Background

The Situation: Louis-Georges Tin, President of the Black Associations Representative Council (CRAN) had previously collaborated with Emmanuel Macron on causes such as the restitution of stolen African treasures from French museums. His government and media connections were key factors before embarking on his current cause: the Ethnic Pay Gap. However, he needed the agency’s help in raising awareness on the issue before he could approach Macron, his relevant government and mass media. The Brief: Raise awareness on the Ethnic Pay Gap, a rising, unspoken issue with data to support it (in France, the ethnic salary gap is 26.25%) with a pro-bono zero budget policy. The Objective: Raise awareness and gather public opinion and PR to where the topic of the Ethnic Pay Gap could be discussed amongst government officials in the hope of drafting policies and creating ethnic statistics to affect change.

Describe the strategy

After extensive research and data gathered from different markets, we have come to realize the underlying issue of Ethnic pay gap globally: 26.25% in France; 23% in the UK; 25% in the US. The bigger problem was that no-one was talking about it, leading to very little awareness around the issue: 39% awareness only, compared to 67% awareness of gender pay gaps. We needed to target people at mass; and make this invisible issue, visible to the wider audience. The perfect opportunity was to capitalize on Twitter, the most effective medium to spread news and spark conversations. But we had to do it smartly, and give ‘change’ itself a voice, for credibility and bigger impact. The aim was to spread enough awareness to attract the attention of journalists and news outlets who would eventually officialize the topic and position it as a global crisis that needed a solution.

Describe the execution

In late June 2021, the Ethnic Pay Gap was personified on Twitter, where it created thought-provoking tweets to shed light on its loneliness and the injustice surrounding its existence. In late August 2021, after Twitter permanently suspended its initial account (for unknown reasons), a great deal of persistence was shown in reopening another Twitter account in September 2021. This time, the Ethnic Pay Gap was angry, and refused to back down. The second Twitter account led to even more awareness than the first, encouraging more audience engagement and journalist attention from late November-December 2021. As we knew the cause couldn’t rely on Twitter alone, we embraced the attention and the addition of social and PR support which led to prominent TV exposure for the cause and the client. The Invisible Twitter Account became the first campaign to communicate the Ethnic Pay Gap and help trigger change for the cause.

List the results

Our brief had been to simply raise awareness. Our results surprised even us. With precisely zero budget, we succeeded in getting $10M earned impressions and became a trending topic on French television and the cause sparked conversation in mass media (international news outlets). At the peak of the campaign, Black Associations Representative Council reported a noted 200% increase in donations. Before the campaign’s launch, media impressions on the ethnic pay gap topic were only 2M. After the campaign, it reached up to 146M. Our biggest result was the exposure we got for the client, Louis-Georges Tin and the cause on national French television, re-opening the debate of ethnic inequality in the workplace. This led to what we consider our most impactful result: French government started a conversation on ethnic inequality, urging to create and release ethnic statistics in an attempt to solve France’s racism problem.