2020 Award Winners - McCain Foods, Renault and Sprite lead the charge in LGBTQ+ inclusive advertising

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Ad industry LGBTQ+ advocacy group Outvertising recognised the brands as inclusion trailblazers by presenting them with special awards at their virtual celebration last night.

The awards evening itself went beyond being just an awards ceremony. The nearly 200 virtual attendees were treated to numerous panels and creative reviews from LGBTQ+ community members and judges, alongside the revelation of winners across four categories; The Accelerator Award (with entries coming via OMB) – won by John Soonaye, as well as The Pride Activation Award – won by Sprite, Outvertising’s Campaign of the Year – won by Renault for their “30 years in the Making” campaign and Brand of the Year won by McCain Foods. As part of a collaboration with OMB, special mention was also to Sam Hennig for his work on an Inclusive Creativity challenge. The two-hour event was a glitzy, fun, warm and practical journey through what makes truly inclusive creative and was brought to life with support from Facebook.

Accelerator Award (One Minute Brief)

  • Winner: John Soonaye

  • Twitter: @JohnSoonaye

Outvertising’s Pride Activation of the Year

  • Winner: Sprite (Coca Cola)

  • Agency / credits: Santo Argentina

  • Campaign: Pride: Sprite

Outvertising’s Campaign of the Year 

Outvertising Brand of the Year 

  • Winner: McCain Foods

Outvertising Chair, Mark Runacus MBE commented,

“The LGBTQ+ community in adland has been particularly badly hit by lockdown, especially in terms of mental health, and so it was really uplifting to see how many entries our awards received this year. Over 400 in total - a ten-fold increase on our last awards. But most importantly the quality of entries was very high. Whilst we still have a long way to go to be comfortable with the level of inclusion in UK advertising, this is a really positive sign amidst troubled times.”

While discussing the entries live on the evening, judge Rachel Reese founder of Global Butterflies said, 

“The trans and non-binary representation was higher than ever, but also more subtle, clever and more refined than we’ve seen previously which was great… Judging the high numbers of entries has been really educational. It’s clear from what we saw brands can make the smallest of adjustments to their output which has the hugest positive impact on the LGBTQ+ community, so it’s really encouraging.”

The audience also heard from the teams behind McCain Foods, Renault and Sprite’s brilliantly inclusive output with each team expressing pride in their newly won accolade, and hope that future LGBTQ+ inclusive ads become the norm, rather than the exception.

As the event’s host, Jerry Daykin senior media director, EMEA for GSK, and Outvertising’s Co-commercial Director said:

“The evening was about learning. Learning from the creatives, learning from the community and finally from our judges.”

 To quote Outvertising’s brand of the Year, McCain Foods, “here’s to all love”. Love really does win.

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How RAW Ldn used their Outvertising Awards prize...

Editorial from James Page from RAW London about their win at the previous Outvertising Awards.

The Outvertising Awards were an incredible experience for our agency (Raw London) to champion an LGBTQ+ story. Since entering and winning the last awards - we donated the prize of £165,000 worth of media spend to the trans youth charity Mermaids, which backed a bespoke film we made for them.

The awards were appealing as they were super easy to enter and allowed us to have complete free-reign with the creative. They also steered us to have discussions around how we can best represent the LGBTQ+ community within the content we create outside of this competition. We attended the last event at Google’s headquarters with around 5 (actually, maybe 10) cocktails consumed to calm our nerves before the judges revealed the outcome. The evening was an incredible experience, and we’re super excited to see the incredible work showcased at this year’s virtual event on the 17th.

Our film ETHAN launched in September 2019 and has since been watched millions of times online. Gay Times also featured a double spread in their 500th magazine issue and shared the film across their social platforms. The two-minute film uses an arcade game to visualise Ethan’s journey; with bullies and the struggles of coming out as trans becoming antagonists and hurdles to overcome within the game. As a fan of video games - it was super exciting to create a virtual realm of our own!

With the level of exposure that came with the media prize from Google and Gay Times, we ensured that the narrative was as true to a trans experience as possible. We worked closely with Ethan to develop his story into a moving script that accurately reflected his experience.

Transgender narratives are often overlooked or under fire in the media, so we wanted to leverage our prize to give a transgender individual a platform. Sadly 2020 has continued with this fire, so having the Outvertising Awards as a platform and incentive to create these stories is not just a fantastic opportunity for an agency, but also an incredibly important one for the wider narrative around queer representation and public opinion. 

We’ll be there watching the two-hour event, which includes talks & panels as well as the announcement of the winners. You can still sign up - just make sure you get your cocktail making perfected beforehand to calm any nerves!

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Announcing a celebration of LGBTQ+ diversity & representation in advertising.

The whole industry is invited to an evening of discovery as we celebrate the power of positive representation, September 17th from 5-7 pm via weblink.

Whilst Pride may have been in lockdown this year, we know the advertising industry can still come out virtually in force. The Outvertising Awards are an opportunity to celebrate the fantastic progress that has been made in LGBTQ+ inclusive advertising as well as to accelerate new ideas and opportunities that are yet to be made. It’s not a standard awards night, but instead a vibrant mix of discussions, personal perspectives and some unexpected entertainment to keep you on the edge of your living room seats.

This has been a year like no other, and we recognise the immense pressure it is putting on people across the creative industry, especially members of minority communities. We also recognise the heightened importance of diversity & representation at this time, and the overwhelming enthusiasm we’ve heard from the creative community to use their talents to do something about it. If you want to understand more about the positive opportunity to feature or engage the LGBTQ+ community in your advertising, then this is the place to be.

We’ll be showcasing the fantastic efforts of the One Minute Briefs community to include work that is yet to be made, as well as telling the story of how some of that has come to life across the country this month to inspire future creativity. Our judges will also be highlighting the best recent activations around Pride & well beyond, and we’ll be awarding the Outvertising Awards to the activation, campaign and brand of the year. Our main Awards categories have been decided by our judging panel, but due to the unusual year we proactively looked across the industry at work even if it hadn’t been specifically submitted.

The awards will be hosted virtually, are open to all, and are kindly supported by Facebook. There’ll be an opportunity to hear from creatives, brands, judges, influencers and broader members of the LGBTQ+ marketing community to better understand the opportunity for brands, as well as what the experience of Pride has been in this lockdown year. It will be a moment of education and opportunity for celebration across the marketing industry, whether you’ve done great work this year or want to be inspired around what you could be doing next.

“I really learn from people in the community, about what really impacts them and what they like. I was sat there learning most of the time, and getting perspectives on the work that I wouldn’t necessarily have thought about. Some of the subtleties and some of the traps that people fall into can be so easy to understand when you really get under the skin of how to get the best and most natural portrayal of LGBTQ+ people in advertising.”
— Stephen Woodford, Chief Executive at Advertising Association
“What I’ve seen change most in this space over the last few years is a shift from tokenism, where it felt that some advertising was becoming a bit tick box, to the work I’ve seen through the Outvertising Awards which feels like genuine work where LGBT+ characters are central to the work, central to the narrative, have a key role to play, and are well represented. There is absolutely fantastic work which we as a community should be proud of.”
— Pete Markey, CMO at TSB
“I was particularly happy to see lots of trans and non-binary entries, I could see my face coming back at me through those adverts. The changes I’ve seen in the D&I space this year have been amazing. We’re getting the right representations in adverts now - a couple of years ago they weren’t really representative, more glamour and fetish. Now we’re seeing trans and non binary people going around their day jobs and I think that’s really really good.”
— Rachel Reese, CEO at Global Butterflies

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