Title	THE COLOR EXPERIMENT
Brand	SAMEN ONDERWIJS MAKEN (SOM)
Product/Service	SENSIBILISATION / EDUCATION
Category	A07. Not-for-profit / Charity / Governemt
Entrant	TBWA\BELGIUM Brussels, BELGIUM
Idea Creation	TBWA\BELGIUM Brussels, BELGIUM
Media Placement	TBWA\BELGIUM Brussels, BELGIUM
PR	TBWA\BELGIUM Brussels, BELGIUM
Production	TBWA\BELGIUM Brussels, BELGIUM

Name	Company	Position
Jeroen Bostoen	TBWA\Belgium	Executive Creative Director
Louise Windels	TBWA\Belgium	Art Director
Sven Pede	TBWA\Belgium	Copywriter
Allen Marchant	TBWA\Belgium	Account Manager
Kristof Janssens	TBWA\Belgium	Strategic Director
Jana Keppens	TBWA\Belgium	Designer
Mieke Vandewalle	MAKE	Head of AV Production
Katrien Van den Brande	MAKE	Producer
Jan Pollet	MAKE	Sound Engineer
Nigel Ooms	TBWA\Belgium	PR Manager
Mieke Vandevyvere	PRIDE	PR Manager
Tine Clauwaert	PRIDE	PR Manager

Why is this work relevant for PR?

Diversity is a hot topic this day. A complex and heated debate. Society is getting more and more mixed, but still we don’t succeed to look at each other the same way. How we look at people is often conditioned behaviour, we have learned during our childhood. That’s why SOM, a Belgian education network, wanted to talk to children in a creative way about diversity and make them understand that all skin tones are equal. Our objective was to open up the debate in education and in society, by showing one of the problems beneath the surface and by offering

Background

Our society is getting more and more diverse, but still we don’t succeed to look at each other the same way. How we look at people is often conditioned behaviour that we have learned during our childhood. That’s why SOM - a Belgian education network - wanted to talk to children in a creative way about diversity and make them understand that all skin tones are equal.

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

When you look at your average classroom, you see a range of different skin tones paying attention to the teacher. But when they are asked to color skin they all grab the same crayon: light pink. A simple experiment showed that every child, whatever the background, considers light pink as the standard color for skin. That’s why SOM - a Belgian education network - developed a set of 7 skin tone crayons. A tool to encourage everyone to broaden their look on diversity. To launch the crayons, more than 1000 students of the SOM network gathered at the Hoover Square in the city of Leuven to color gigantic drawings of people from all over the world. From light pinkish tones to dark brown ones.

Describe the PR strategy (30% of vote)

The objective was to open up the debate in education and in our society, by showing one of the problems beneath the surface and by offering a possible tool to change the way our kids look at diversity. Changing the way they look at it, will help boost their self-esteem. Playful elements, such as crayons, can draw attention to diversity in our educational system. The playful tool opens up the debate and allows kids to feel reflected in today’s educational system.

Describe the PR execution (20% of vote)

How crayons can draw attention to diversity in our educational system. We asked kids to take part in an experiment which had unsettling results. Directed to pick a colored pencil to use to fill in “skin color” on a drawing of a person, every child picked the light pink shade. Even kids with skin tones much better matched by other pencils in the box picked pink. When asked to choose orange or green, kids happily obliged, so they know their colors. And when asked to color in a picture of themselves, they all choose a pencil that’s very representative of how they actually look. But the phrase “skin color” throws them off. So we created a box of pencils with seven different shades—The Skin Color Collection—to redefine what kids think of as the right color for skin.

List the results (30% of vote)

The organic video got over 24.000 views on SOM’s facebook page, which only had 600 likes at that time, in only two weeks. In overall, the campaign obtained an Equivalent Advertising Value of more than 150.000€ without any money invested in media. Reaching more than 75% of Belgians. And the pencils? Thousands of schools have ordered the skin color collection and lots of Belgian kids are coloring like they’ve never colored before.