Channel 4 has released the brief for its Diversity in Advertising Award.
This year, the focus is on accessibility, encouraging brands to embed inclusive practices into their creative campaigns.
The winning brand will receive £1m+ of advertising space across the broadcaster.
“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,” said Veriça Djurdjevic, Chief Revenue Officer at Channel 4.
“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.”
It’s the ninth year that the competition has been run, with previous themes including LGBTQIA+, neurodiversity and physical disability.
Channel 4 Sales’ research identified that if more ads used inclusive techniques, they could reach an additional 14m people across the UK.