Inside Channel4’s £1 million Annual Diversity in Advertising Award

Channel 4 today launched a new annual competition offering £1million of the broadcaster’s commercial airtime for the best ad campaign featuring diversity.

The inaugural Channel 4 Annual Diversity in Advertising Award (opens in a new window) is a long term commitment from Channel 4 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 advertising industry to embrace inclusive creative campaigns – and extend Channel 4’s leadership in diversity beyond its editorial content and into the ad breaks. The 2017 £1million competition focusses on the particularly challenging brief of invisible disability.

Channel 4 has recognised that non-visible disabilities and mental health issues need to be addressed more publicly and through this year’s award has invited the British advertising industry to tackle this challenge. Brands and agencies will be invited to pitch creative campaign ideas which focus on issues surrounding non-visible disabilities and the winning campaign will be awarded £1 million worth of the broadcaster’s commercial airtime and will be aired later this year.

The broadcaster has received numerous awards and changed public perceptions of disability through its marketing strategy and coverage of the London and Rio Paralympics and its efforts to address the lack of disabled talent on and off-screen with much of this focus on physical disabilities. Now Channel 4 has turned its attention to the next taboo – non-visible disability – and is encouraging the advertising industry to focus its attention on this issue by staking this significant prize.

In addition to the £1million award, Channel 4 is offering up to four runners-up match-funded commercial airtime. The competition focus ensures Channel 4 continues to champion disability issues in British TV advertising beyond the Paralympic Games.