THE GOOD – Stamma ad challenges misconceptions surrounding stammering
Earlier this week, National organisation Stamma launched a campaign in partnership with VMLY&R to highlight the many misconceptions experienced by people who stammer.
In the run up to International Stammering Awareness Day on 22 October, the organisation released its ‘How We Talk’ campaign, which entails a set of posters and a video which capture people with a stammer mid-sentence.
The campaign aims to celebrate each moment, while also calling out damaging comments people who stammer may have endured.
The film includes 17 individuals who stammer, and is voiced by six of the individuals photographed for the campaign: Betony Kelly, Bel Rickard, Christine Simpson, John Russell, Pedro Albuquerque and Steven Babic.
“Our polling shows 59% of people are unable to name a character from TV or film who stammers — a startling absence of representation which drives lack of recognition in everyday life,” Stamma CEO Jane Powell said.
“This campaign intends to create greater visibility and understanding within the public that stammering is just how some people talk”.
VMLY&R London director and creative Daniel Liakh added: “Some people see stammering as beautiful, others as something ugly and worth fixing. Regardless of what you think about this campaign, the fact remains — it’s just how some people talk. Deal with it.”
THE BAD – British Airways’ business, leisure … campaign
At the beginning of this week, London-based Uncommon Creative Studio released its first pieces of work for British Airways since winning the flag carrier’s advertising accounts in October last year.
The extensive campaign is set to run for one month across a range of different media, including TV, print, digital and outdoor.
While a TV campaign will debut throughout peak programming, state-of-the-art interactive DOOH boards have also been implemented across the UK. The OOH assets respond to location, time of day, weather and current events and adapt to their individual mediums, such as contextual bus wraps and press ads.
Each out-of-home ad depicts a list of reasons for travelling abroad. One reads: ‘Business, Leisure, Stag do. Pray for me,’ the latter ticked off as the selected option.
However, Nice and Serious co-founder and CEO, Tom Tapper, believes the ad contributes to the losing battle fought against the climate crisis.
“The creative industry is swooning over BA’s latest campaign, and rightly so – it’s a brilliant piece of advertising,” Tapper wrote on LinkedIn.
“No two ads are the same. More than 500 ads representing an individual reason to fly.
“Perhaps it if they were more truthful, it might read: ‘Business, Leisure, Ignoring climate breakdown’.
“This campaign will no doubt drive up sales of the most polluting form of transport on the planet. Until the best minds in advertising start saying no to briefs like this, the climate crisis will continue to get worse.”
THE UGLY – Adidas drops Kanye West over antisemitic comments
This week sportswear giant Adidas terminated its partnership with US rapper Kanye West over offensive and antisemitic comments.
The news came days after West said that the brand could never cut ties with him.
However, the German sportswear retailer ended its partnership with the rapper with immediate effect.
In a statement, Adidas said it does “not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech”.
“Kanye West’s recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and they violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness.
“After a thorough review, the company has taken the decision to terminate the partnership with Kanye West immediately, end production of Yeezy branded products and stop all payments to Ye and his companies. Adidas will stop the Adidas Yeezy business with immediate effect.”
As a result of the termination, Adidas expects to take a hit of as much as $246.5 million (£217.87 million) to its net income in the current fiscal year.
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