2019 Winner

Black & Abroad

Go Back to Africa

FCB/SIX + Initiative

BronzeBest Use of Digital - Best in Mobile

Hurled by everyone from Twitter trolls to (completely awful) elected officials, “Go back to Africa” has become a pervasive racial slur. To strip the hurtful phrase of its meaning, travel and lifestyle collective Black & Abroad turned it into a call-to-action to visit one of Africa’s 54 countries by redacting the racist intent and turning it into a tourism ad for GoBackToAfrica.com. The content platform used Google Vision AI to aggregate images of black travellers (who are underrepresented in travel imagery) in Africa, and targeted black millennials with 6,840 individualized ads based on their interests. Aside from being hugely empowering for its audience, the campaign increased booking intent by 60%, brand visibility by 315%, and ultimately changed the meaning of the phrase.

Credits
Companies: Agency: FCB/SIX Production: Rooster Post Production –Editing - Toronto, Canada Advertiser/Client: Black & Abroad
Music and Sound Design: Grayson Matthews Audio Design Media Agency: Initiative Media placement – Toronto, Canada PR: Glossy PR – Toronto, Canada
CCO: Ian Mackenzie Associate Creative Director: Andrew Bernardi Associate Creative Director: Frederick Nduna 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 VP, 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
Editor: Colin Murdock Editor: Jeff Poremba Assistant Editor: Shane Preston Executive Producer: Yumi Suyama
Public Relations: Shannon Stephaniuk
Music Producer: Mark Domitric Sound Engineer: Vlad Nikolic Media Producer: Nicholas Shaw