Black community – Campaigns of the World

The Black Elevation Map | A data visualisation project that elevates Black cultural data

COTW — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 10:25:17 +0000

The Black Elevation Map is an immersive digital experience that reimagines the American landscape by visualizing the heights of The Culture as elevation. The platform takes cultural data, such as Black population data, historical markers, Black-owned businesses, and social media activity, and visualizes it as points of interest on a dynamic, searchable elevation map of the United States. The greater the density of data, the higher the elevation.

Why a map?
From redlining to modern urban planning, you don’t have to look far to see ways in which maps have been used to marginalize, divide and oppress communities around the world. Brand want this project to help Black travelers see the country in a way that prioritizes and celebrates the contributions of folks who look like us – and facilitates travel choices that deepen engagement within our community. Repurposing a traditional elevation map is a way for us to weave joy and depth into the story, the experience, and our interpretation of the data.

Where’s the data coming from?
At launch, the Black Elevation Map contains more than 30,000 unique points of interest, plus detailed population data, and Black-travel-related social media activity data. In choosing which data to include in this project, they wanted sources where the Black community had self-identified, versus data collection sources that try to identify without consent.

Source
Yelp and Google, both of which have options for business owners to self-identify as Black-owned. The map also includes data classified as “African American” from The Historical Markers Database.

How does the travel feed work?
The travel feed pulls in Black travel-related social media conversations from Twitter and Insta based on hashtag use. It’s categorized across three main streams, for a total of 1,500 social sources across 53 unique embedded data feeds.

Credits
Agency: Performance Art / Toronto
Client: Black & Abroad

Blackboard Community: Black lives don’t matter

COTW — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 13:39:19 +0000

When George Floyd’s life was taken in early 2020, the brutal act reignited anger that’s been bubbling for years. Black lives have been at risk in the US long after slavery got banned. But this issue extends beyond police brutality. Racism exists in the corporate world, more so in advertising. It’s in the form of exclusion. The lack of diversity in ad agencies results in the misrepresentation of the Black community in media and ads. The most recent example is an ad in SA for a hair product. The ad showed black hair with the headline “Frizzy & Dull hair”. And next to it, blonde hair with the headline: “Normal hair”. The Blackboard ad is a response to it. And a reminder of why the #BlackLivesMatter movement exists.

Credits
Client: blackboardcommunity.co.za
Agency: King James

This campaign is about:
Print Campaign, Social Campaign, inequality, Black lives don’t matter

Black & Abroad: Go Back to Africa

COTW — Sun, 08 Nov 2020 15:43:21 +0000

American travel brand Black & Abroad wanted to get members of the Black community to consider visiting African destinations. But first, it needed to break down misconceptions of the continent and address the lack of representation of Black people in commercial travel imagery.

With the help of FCB/SIX, the brand transformed a racialized expression into a call to action, while celebrating the continent’s beauty and cultural diversity and encouraging black travellers to “Go Back to Africa.” An AI-powered content platform was created containing a vast repository of curated travel imagery, showing members of the Black community travelling in Africa. Then, social posts containing the derogatory “Go back to Africa” expression were captured, stripped of their racial context, and repurposed into hyper-targeted ads promoting Africa’s 54 countries. The campaign led to a 315% increase in brand visibility and a 60% boost in booking interest for the company’s African tours.

About Black & Abroad
It is a multi-platform travel & lifestyle company. Since 2015, our digital outlets, international events and travel experiences have redefined experiences for the modern Black traveler. We pride ourselves on curating international, culturally conscious luxury & adventure travel moments for Black travelers while providing a crowd-sourced information hub for urban explorers. Seeing a need to elevate the community through world exploration, our collective of influencers have come together to share their travel experiences to assist us in showing familiar faces in unfamiliar places and expose the world to nuanced, diverse, narratives within the travel community.

Credits
Client: Black & Abroad, LLC.
Co-Founder, Client: Eric Martin
Co-Founder, Client: Kent Johnson
Chief Creative Officer: Ian Mackenzie
Associate Creative Director: Frederick Nduna
Associate Creative Director: Andrew Bernardi
Designer: Ramon Charles
Copywriter: Curtis Chapman
Account Director: Fraser Jackson
Integrated Producer: Gillian Morrison
Junior Producer: Kristine Lippett
EVP, Strategy: Anna Percy-Dove
Director, Strategy: Paul Hanlon
Strategist: Simran Kaur
Senior Manager, Data Analytics: Andrew Yang
Data Analyst: Abdul Dau
SVP, Head of Data and Technology: Jacob Ciesielski
Product & Technology Solutions: John Sime
Front-End Developer: Heung Lee
President: Andrea Cook
SVP, Director of Global Communications & PR: Melanie Mitchem

Post Production House: Rooster Post Production
Editor, Post-Production: Colin Murdock,
Editor, Post-Production: Jeff Poremba
Assistant Editor, Post-Production: Shane Preston
Executive Producer, Post-Production: Yumi Suyama

Media Agency: Initiative Media

Public Relations: Shannon Stephaniuk – Glossy PR

Music/Sound: Grayson Matthews Audio Design
Music Producer: Mark Domitric
Sound Engineer: Vlad Nikolic
Media Producer: Nicholas Shaw