Channel 4’s 2024 Diversity in Advertising Award is set to challenge brands to make TV ads more accessible with a focus on producing work that is “Inclusive by Design”.
Giving brands the chance to secure £1 million of advertising space across the broadcaster’s portfolio, this year’s award will entrants to shape their campaigns around accessibility and inclusion.
This latest brief will build on the representation themes of LGBTQIA+, neurodiversity and physical disability explored in previous years, calling on brands and agencies to remove the barriers faced by many people with disabilities when watching TV advertising.
The concept is based on the revealing statistics from the RNID that shows 18 million people in the UK experience varying degrees of hearing loss and deafness, whilst RNIB research spotlights the 340,000 people who are registered blind or partially sighted.
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“The Diversity in Advertising Award has challenged the industry to up its game every year and played a huge role in encouraging it to be more representative of the UK,” Channel 4 chief revenue officer, Verica Djurdjevic said.
“This year’s brief is a call to arms: let’s make ads inclusive by design. Already this year, Channel 4 has begun to challenge the industry on equity and inclusion by committing that all ads during our coverage of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games will carry subtitles. We now want to go further.”
This year’s theme aligns with Channel 4’s ongoing ‘Equity by Design’ initiative that forms part of the broadcaster’s commitment to ‘creating change’ – anchored by six key principles.
Entries for the 2024 awards will need to be submitted by 4pm on 20 September, with a judging panel made up of advertising experts from across the industry set to decide the winner in November.
