prabhuNubian Skin has won an advertising competition and been rewarded £500,000-worth of advertising space on the TfL network.
Nubian Skin’s winning campaign, which challenges assumptions surrounding the word ‘nude’ in the fashion industry, was chosen due to its bold and inclusive imagery which embraced a range of ages and body types as well as skin tones.
For the winning campaign, created by Nubian Skin’s in-house team, the company has been awarded £500,000-worth of prominent advertising space across the TfL network, including space on the digital screens at Canary Wharf and across the JCDecaux UK digital bus shelter network.
This is the second year of the diversity in advertising competition, which aims to combat stereotypes and make advertising in London more representative of the capital’s ethnic diversity.
Ade Hassan, Founder & CEO of Nubian Skin, said: “It’s such an honour to have won this competition. As a small, London-based business it is incredible to know that we will be featured across the TFL system, which in itself carries every day a great representation of the diversity present in London.
“This campaign is particularly important to me because I feel advertising has a very one-dimensional view of what blackness means, and this allows us to give a broader snap shot of what being black means to different people.”
Working with TfL’s media partners, Global and JCDecaux UK, the competition called on brands to create adverts that offered authentic portrayals of London’s Black and Minority Ethnic communities.
London is one of the most diverse cities in the world, with 40 per cent of its population identifying as Black, Asian or minority ethnic, but more than 60 per cent of adverts still feature only or majority white people according to Lloyds Banking Group’s ‘Ethnicity in Advertising’ report.
The competition follows research carried out by Lloyds Banking Group, in 2018, that revealed 34 per cent of Black people and 30 per cent of people from mixed ethnic backgrounds they felt they were inaccurately portrayed in advertising.
Debbie Weekes-Bernard, Deputy Mayor for Social Integration, Social Mobility and Community Engagement, said: “London’s greatest strength it its diversity but for too long, the advertising industry has been reluctant to represent the varying backgrounds and identities of its consumers in all their rich complexity.”
Community football programme Grassroots for Good was awarded the runner-up prize of up to £50,000 worth of digital advertising space for their campaign which celebrates the power of grassroots sport, it will go on display across the TfL network later this year.
