Few Americans realize the benefits that public housing offers to individuals, as well as communities. Cone Communications developed a campaign and promoted the documentary “Our Journey Home” to emotionally connect consumers to the critical importance of a safe and stable home.
Year Up is a non-profit initiative that matches young people from challenging backgrounds with corporate internships. Criseli Saenz, a former intern who came to Omnicom via the Year Up program, now works as a coordinator on the Diversity & Inclusion team, and manages the ADCOLOR FUTURES program, which provides training, mentorship, and opportunities for young people with lots of potential, but few connections in the industry.
We Are Unlimited launched Unlimited Talent this year to attract diverse high school and college students to advertising careers. On April 6, the agency invited 20 students from Urban Prep Academies to visit and learn about its work. The Chicago-based school has a 100% graduation rate for the young men who attend; and all graduates have been accepted to four-year colleges and universities.
In 2016, the Omnicom People Engagement Network (OPEN) launched OPEN Pride—an employee resource group committed to inclusion and diversity efforts for Omnicom’s LGBT community and its allies. A kickoff event in April 2017 brought together LGBT employees from throughout the Omnicom family to share experiences, make connections and work together for a more inclusive workplace.
Our agencies and networks strive to provide networking and learning opportunities for all employees, helping each individual to grow and advance to their highest potential. For 23 years, Omnicom University has been our company’s flagship program for leadership development. Employing the Harvard Business School case study method, Omnicom University brings together mid- and senior-level executives to discuss examples of Omnicom’s business strategies worldwide to teach leadership and business skills.
BLK MKT Studios—a small, certified minority/woman-owned editing and finishing collective—and Pony Sound—a certified minority-owned audio recording and post-production house, both partnered with GSD&M to create new, diversity-focused content for John Deere. The “Misconceptions” TV spot and “ING Radio” spot helped show John Deere as an affordable choice for a broad spectrum of customers, while ensuring the highest quality product for the client.
How far have we come in out fight for diversity? How much further do we have to go? In Chicago, Bounce and Omnicom Media Group celebrated Black History Month by gathering 150 advertising and media professionals and press to discuss “Recognizing Progress in Diversity.” Speakers included CNN commentator Angela Rye and veteran jounralist Ed Gordon.
Now in its 10th year, ADCOLOR is an industry coalition that helps promote diversity and inclusion in the creative industy, ensuring the diverse people who join the marketing profession stay in the industry and develop robust careers.
Omniwomen is an initiative designed to encourage female talent across all Omnicom companies. This global organization expanded to ten chapters in 2017, with new chapters in Canada, Germany, UAE and France. Additional chapters in Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, San Francisco and New York are set to open later this year.
Through an energetic industrial theatre road show, Dettol teaches 3 to 10 year-olds how hand-washing and good personal hygiene can massively reduce the incidence of infectious disease and illness. The shows are supported by material distributed to over 2,000 Pick n Pay School Club schools, and has resulted in Dettol being 32% more popular than its nearest rival.
With support from BBDO Guatemala, the “Infancia en Extinción” campaign by Plan International aims to raise awareness for the thousands of children who are victims of violence, child labor, malnutrition, teen pregnancy and underage marriage.
This campaign for the maker of Plan B One-Step® sought to reduce unwanted pregnancy by promoting emergency contraception. The campaign educated young women about their planning options via events on college campuses and through social and traditional media.
MAL\FOR GOOD created a website and campaign to promote XQ Super School’s competition inviting solutions to challenges facing youth preparing for college and life. The website encouraged access to open source solutions and a bus tour connected grassroots activists with youth, parents and educators.
OMD Singapore spearheaded a promotional campaign to promote Estée Lauder’s Breast Cancer Awareness program, which included media outreach as well as lighting iconic Singapore buildings in pink to celebrate survivors.
What if the future Queen of Spain, Princess Leonor, dropped out of school? #Leonordejalaescuela, a campaign created by DDB Tandem, asked a question that went viral to focus attention on another Leonor, who, as a Romani child, faced a 60% risk of quitting school.
“Your voice is your power. Use it.” A video produced by Alma DDB shows the struggles of Hispanic students as they balance work, family, academics and extracurricular activities, and encourages them to apply for a McDonald’s scholarship.
ActionAid, an NGO dedicated to children’s survival and education, wanted to raise awareness of its work cost-effectively. To help, DLV BBDO Milan designed the Donate Your Profile social media campaign, inviting people to let ActionAid stories take over their pages. The campaign went viral, creating 79 million media impressions worldwide.
A CARE study found that around 150,000 girls don’t finish high school on time in Peru. Garwich BBDO Peru supports the NGO’s work with public schools, families, communities and girls to help young women finish their studies.
TracyLocke raised $1 million to support the Indwe Learning Center in Illovo, South Africa, a Montessori blended curriculum school for children orphaned by the massive AIDS epidemic in South Africa. The school establishes a model that can be used in other countries.
Over the past five years, Marina Maher Communications has raised money for She’s the First through bake sales, yoga sessions, company-wide jeans days and raffles. In 2016, they funded tuition for 14 girls at the Arlington Academy in Uganda.
Portland Communications worked with Education Above All, an organization that empowers children through education, to develop powerful messaging that positioned the global foundation as a key partner in attaining the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal #4 around education.
Illiterate people are more likely to live in poverty, lack education and miss out on opportunities to participate in society and join the workforce. Flamingo London partnered with Pearson’s Project Literacy to develop a messaging campaign showing how illiteracy contributes to social and economic hardships.
Timed for Super Bowl Sunday 2017, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners worked with Tostitos to create the Party Safe Bag – a limited-edition chip bag that contained a sensor to detect traces of alcohol on a person’s breath. When alcohol was detected, the bag turned red, revealing an Uber code and a “Don’t drink and drive” message.
The OMD Fast Forward Programme, in partnership with Good Jobs, aims to bridge the opportunity gap between companies looking for diverse talent and talented young people from disadvantaged areas. Twenty OMD volunteers pitch in to mentor students in digital communications skills in a 12-month paid internship program.
Cosmetics manufacturer Nivea supports quality time with families by building 40 Nivea Yards, or places where families could spend time together. OMD Macroscope supports them with media that encourages families to build and use public play spaces like Podwórko NIVEA.
PHD India and Omnicom Media Group support Hindustan Unilever’s efforts to improve health and hygiene for one billion people through education on the benefits of hand-washing to prevent diarrhea.
The campaign Mezi svými (Here we belong) shows immigrants talking about the hateful — and friendly — reactions they’ve gotten from native Czechs, celebrating and reaffirming connections between new and old residents of this European country.
People can exchange a bag of food scraps for goods such as coffee beans, muffins and t-shirts, thanks to an initiative by Auckland organic waste collection business, We Compost, with support from Auckland Council and DDB.
In more than 120 countries, women have fewer rights than men, including restrictions on what they can wear. DDB Tandem’s video, developed with the support of Spanish designer David Delfin, highlights discrimination by showing models wearing clothing forbidden to women.
Millions of Pakistanis live in the darkness. BBDO Pakistan created a campaign to promote PepsiCo’s Lighting Up Lives campaign, an initiative that has helped install hundreds of lights in refugee camps and other underprivileged areas across Pakistan.
A 21.6% smoking rate puts South Korea amongst the highest of the OECD countries for smoking. FleishmanHillard designed a Fingerband – or rubber wristband – as the focus of a National Health Promotion Plan that helped reduce teen smoking rates in Korea by 15% for boys and 20% for girls.
Twenty charities, ranging from London’s air ambulance to a nature project in Hackney, got mentoring and training from Portland to make them better communicators through the Team London charity project. Portland was handpicked by the Mayor of London to be the official communications partner for the project.
HDI Youth Marketeers helped Pikitup, the City of Johannesburg’s Waste Management Company, develop the Eco-Rangers program. The campaign includes theatrical roadshows to teach primary school students about taking care of the environment, and has visited over 100 schools performing for more than 35,000 participants.
Over 3,000 volunteers worked on over 100 projects at 80 locations in and around Austin, Texas. Volunteers worked to care for trees, repaint park structures, pick up trash and refurbish trails.
To help Indonesians affected by cataract blindness, a team from TBWA/Group Singapore worked with the John Fawcett Foundation to develop a virtual reality device that simulates cataracts. Artists then created work based on the VR images which were sold to raise funds for the cause.
In Lebanon, speeding is a major cause of accidents. TBWA/RAAD/LEBANON’s Warning Voice campaign promoted an unusual way to get drivers to slow down: a Nissan speed warning that replaced alarm sounds with voices of loved ones.
That’s Not Love changes the language around relationship violence in order to give young people the tools to have open conversations about the issue. Hundreds of victims have contacted the One Love organization to express how the campaign has helped them.
Agency 180LA helped Boost Your Voice create a partnership between local governments, voting rights organizations and elected officials to increase voter access in low-income communities.
When AB InBev partnered with Lyft to provide 80,000 free safe rides home as part of a year-long responsible drinking campaign, FleishmanHillard promoted the program with social and traditional media that reached 1.8 million Facebook users and 32 million Twitter users, receiving 3.9 thousand mentions in conversations.
COVERGIRL emerged as a champion of inclusivity by announcing the first-ever male face of the brand: James Charles, a boundary-breaking young social media star and aspiring makeup artist. The shift put COVERGIRL at the forefront of a cultural shift toward equal opportunity of self-expression for all genders.
Cone hosted branded events to promote KOMBIT: The Cooperative to the CSR influencer community, resulting in over 173.4 million impressions. The documentary campaign introduced media, influencers and consumers to Timberland’s agroforestry model.
Critical Mass launched a responsive website for Hope North, a nonprofit that provides education and healing for children affected by Uganda’s civil war. The website highlights how music, art, literature and dance inspire Hope North students to become future leaders.
This pro bono campaign by Goodby Silverstein & Partners raised awareness around sexual assault and rape on college campuses by creating mock acceptance letters from colleges that included details about actual assaults students should plan on being subjected to.
Imagine walking into a grocery store where every item is five times more expensive than it usually is. Goodby, Silverstein & Partners used this simple concept to raise awareness of the 800,000 people in San Francisco who live on the poverty line, earning about a fifth of the median income.
Sancho BBDO created the Colores Piel campaign for Fundacion Pies Descalzos, the Colombian non-governmental organization founded by international pop star Shakira. The campaign promotes respect for racial diversity and teaches children to stand up against discrimination.
Refugees often leave everything behind but their house key. Caritas’ Keys of Hope campaign matched ten human stories recorded in Caritas refugee camps to ten keys, giving anonymous refugees a voice that the mainstream media denied them.
A powerful ad about the dangers of distracted driving makes the case that “you’re never alone when you’re driving, even when you’re alone in your car.” The ad supported AT&T’s It Can Wait campaign to reduce texting while driving; reducing accidents and saving lives.
Ariel’s #ShareTheLoad campaign exposed how the burden of housework is focused solely on women and is passed down over generations in India. The campaign inspired over two million men to share the load of laundry, and Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, said this campaign contained “one of the most powerful videos I have ever seen.”
To celebrate International Day of the Blind, Sberbank created a unique exhibition of tactile pictures, allowing both visually-impaired and seeing people to experience art through touch. BBDO Moscow developed a communications campaign for the exhibit that drew in more than 130,000 people.
A bullet hole in a window of Off the Street Club, a West Garfield Park refuge for kids and teenagers, was a shocking reminder of the 93 murders of young Chicagoans last year. But, it also became a symbol of hope in an Energy BBDO campaign that drew more than two million donations.