How Brands Can Better Engage & Represent Their LGBTQ+ Consumers - Yes, It's The Highlights from the #Outvertising Awards 2020!

Last week Outvertising went live for our biggest & best event ever - yes, we gave out some awards (Sprite! Renault! McCain!!) BUT more importantly we heard & learnt from experts & the community on how to make better LGBTQ+ inclusive work. In doing so not only can you positively engage your LGBT colleagues & consumers, but also you can shape more distinctive work that cuts through to a broad audience.

Thanks to over 200 of you who came to be part of the night! If you want to relive or share the highlights, or if you missed out and want to catch up then don’t worry, the 2020 Outvertising Awards are now fully online. Huge thanks to our supporters at Facebook, and for all the Outvertising team and panellists who helped make them happen.

If you’re in a rush and just want a taster then check out our 8 minute snapshot or 30 minute highlights summary. If you want to relive the whole event play by play, from our fabulous opening cocktail class through to our final celebrations, then dive into our full evening playlist right now.

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A Call to Action For the Industry

Our previous awards have always focussed on a ‘Pride Brand Makeover’, a challenge to the industry to reimagine existing work with a more inclusive lens. With exceptional pressures across the industry this year we found a new way to bring this to life with the One Minute Briefs creative community, partnering together on two quick-response briefs.

First up we came with some ideas to challenge the industry itself and push us to rethink the need for representation, which have been running in the flesh across the country thanks to Clear Channel and Brand Advance. Next we asked the community to reimagine some classic adverts or brand platforms and sparked some fantastic responses.

On the night itself we had two panels unpacking these experiences and exploring what we learnt along the way:

Panel: A Call to Action For the Industry

Panel: What Can Brands Do Differently

Accelerator Award: John Soonaye

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Pride in 2020

Pride itself is of course at the heart of the LGBTQ+ community, and whilst we couldn’t take to the streets this year, we still found plenty of ways to mark the occasion. It’s a concept of having Pride in yourself whoever you are, whoever you love, because whoever you are is awesome. It’s a movement, it’s a day, it’s a flag, it’s a celebration, it’s a protest – but ultimately it’s a riot.

Pride means a lot of different things to different members of the community, and there different ideas around the role brands can play too. To bring that to life we asked a selection of the Outvertising community and friends for their personal perspectives, and then were delighted to be able to award the award for Best Pride Activation to Sprite.

Perspectives: The Importance of Pride

Pride Activation Award: Sprite, Argentina

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We're Here and We're Queer All Year

The LGBTQ+ community doesn’t disappear when Pride is over and one of the clearest asks is for brands to keep engaging, representing and supporting all year long. It’s also a broad community with huge intersectionality and diversity within it and fantastic opportunities to bring those different stories & perspectives to life. Before we gave out the Campaign of the Year Award to Renault we had the chance to hear from a panel of different queer perspectives on what more brands can be doing.

Panel: I’m Here and I’m Queer All Year

Campaign of the Year Award: Renault Clio, UK

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Our Judges & Brand of the Year

Finally we ended the night by asking a couple of our judges what they had learnt from judging the awards, what has changed over the years and the key lessons for brands. It was then back over to Stephen, the chair of our judges, to announce our final winner of the night for our Brand of the Year. We did follow on with a live after party Zoom, but what happens in the after party stays in the after party – though for a hint you can check out Jamie’s cocktail class which opened the main show itself.

Perspectives: What I Learnt as a Judge

Brand of the Year Award: McCain, UK

Bonus: Mojitos with Jamie

Please do dig into the content, share it with your colleagues, reuse it in your own internal events and then we’ll see you all next year at the 2021 Awards, or hopefully sometime much sooner – get in touch to see how you can get involved or have an Outvertising event within your own organisation.