Offset Challenges Visual Stereotypes With a Single Search
Offset by Shutterstock launched 'New Stereotypes Available' in Argentina in March 2019, a digital campaign created by Mercado McCann, Buenos Aires, that positioned the act of searching for stock images as the origin point of visual stereotypes — and, equally, as the starting point for more inclusive representation.
The campaign's central argument is precise and deliberately simple. As stated in the campaign materials, 'All stereotypes start with a search,' and, by extension, 'Inclusion also starts with a search.' The creative premise transforms an everyday professional behaviour — typing a search term into a stock image library — into a moment of cultural consequence. Every query either reproduces a limiting visual cliché or, if the right image collection is available, begins to dismantle one. The campaign announced that Offset had created a new category within its curated library specifically to offer more representative imagery, making the product launch itself the proof of the brand's stated values.
Published in the Argentine market as a digital execution comprising one primary media asset, the campaign also connected to related print materials — including an execution titled 'Washing Dishes' — that extended the platform across formats. Mercado McCann, the Buenos Aires agency founded in late 2014 according to documented advertising records, developed the work under the creative leadership of chief creative officer Martin Mercado alongside three executive creative directors. The campaign sits within the professional services category, addressing creative professionals, marketing teams, and content producers who rely on stock photography to tell stories about the world — and who, through their search habits, shape which images of that world gain visibility and commercial currency.
The strategic insight behind 'New Stereotypes Available' is grounded in how stock image libraries actually function. Search results do not merely reflect cultural attitudes — they reinforce them. When a creative professional types 'doctor,' 'engineer,' or 'family' into a stock library and the results return a narrow, demographically homogeneous set of images, those defaults become the visual language of advertising, editorial, and communications at scale. Mercado McCann identified this search-result loop as both the problem and the solution.
The Argentine advertising market in 2019 was operating within a broader Latin American conversation about gender equity and representation. The Epica Awards, which recognised the campaign with a Silver in the Public Interest – Gender Equity category, as reported by adsoftheworld.com, reflect the degree to which industry juries across this period were actively evaluating work on inclusion through a rigorous creative lens rather than as a secondary consideration. The campaign's entry into that specific awards category signals Mercado McCann's deliberate framing of the work as a public interest contribution, not merely a product announcement.
In the competitive landscape of curated stock photography, Offset by Shutterstock operates alongside platforms including Getty Images and Adobe Stock, both of which have pursued their own diversity and representation initiatives. What distinguishes the Offset approach in this campaign is the decision to make the search interface itself the creative territory — rather than simply showcasing diverse imagery in advertising, the brand argued that adding a new searchable category is the structural act that makes inclusion possible. In Argentina and across the broader region, this positioning offered creative professionals a concrete, tool-based reason to choose Offset, connecting a product feature directly to a cultural value without overstating the brand's role in social change.
Executive creative director Diego Tuya led the creative execution alongside fellow executive creative directors Dario Rial and Nicolas Massimino, with chief creative officer Martin Mercado overseeing the full creative vision. The campaign's production team brought together a focused set of collaborators: art director Valentina Diaz Salama, copywriter Santiago Narvaja, head of art Alejandro Isturiz, agency producer Agustin Borgognoni, and account director Agustin Castellaños, with client-side leadership from Siobhan Aalders, Enrique Valdez, Alejandro Ventura, and Tere Lopez.
The decision to build the campaign around a single digital media asset is itself a creative and strategic choice worth examining. Rather than distributing the message across a high-volume, multi-format campaign, Mercado McCann concentrated the argument into one precise execution. This approach reflects the nature of the insight: if the campaign's claim is that a single search is the origin of either a stereotype or an act of inclusion, then a singular, concentrated creative object carries structural meaning. The form echoes the content.
The related print execution titled 'Washing Dishes,' documented on adsoftheworld.com as part of the broader 'New Stereotypes Available' platform, demonstrates that the creative team developed the idea with enough conceptual rigour to hold across different formats and cultural reference points. Each execution likely took a familiar, stereotype-laden search term and reframed it against the imagery that Offset's new category now made available. The tagline — 'All stereotypes start with a search' — functions as both a critical observation about existing visual culture and a product promise, a dual register that gives the copy unusual efficiency. The writing credit belongs to Santiago Narvaja, whose line does not explain the idea so much as embody it.
The 'New Stereotypes Available' campaign earned a Silver award at the Epica Awards 2019 in the Public Interest – Gender Equity category, as reported by adsoftheworld.com. This recognition from a jury composed of European advertising journalists places the work within a specifically evaluated tradition of campaigns that address social equity through creative means — a category in which technical executional quality and strategic clarity are assessed alongside impact intent.
No additional verified performance data for the campaign — including search volume shifts, brand awareness metrics, or Offset library subscription figures attributable to the work — is publicly available. What can be assessed is the campaign's structural effectiveness. The creative mechanism is self-reinforcing: it turns a habitual professional behaviour into the central metaphor, which means every creative professional who encounters the campaign is implicated in its argument. The campaign does not ask audiences to change their values; it asks them to notice what they are already doing and to choose a different tool as a result. This lowers the persuasive distance between message and action.
The Clapboard Score for 'New Stereotypes Available' is 64 out of 100. This reflects the campaign's genuine conceptual strength and its award-validated creative quality, balanced against the limited volume of available public-facing assets and the absence of independently verified performance metrics. The work demonstrates that a single, well-reasoned digital asset — when anchored to a culturally specific insight and executed with precise copy — can generate sustained industry recognition and contribute meaningfully to a brand's positioning in a competitive professional services market.
'New Stereotypes Available' is a 2019 digital campaign for Offset by Shutterstock, created by Mercado McCann in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It argued that visual stereotypes originate in stock image search behaviour and announced a new inclusive image category within the Offset library to address that problem directly.
Mercado McCann, Buenos Aires, created the campaign. The agency, founded in late 2014, developed the work under chief creative officer Martin Mercado and executive creative directors Diego Tuya, Dario Rial, and Nicolas Massimino, with copywriter Santiago Narvaja and art director Valentina Diaz Salama leading execution.
The campaign won a Silver award at the Epica Awards 2019 in the Public Interest – Gender Equity category, as reported by adsoftheworld.com. The recognition placed the work among campaigns evaluated by European advertising journalists for both creative quality and meaningful contribution to social equity.
The tagline positions the stock image search interface as the origin of visual stereotypes in media and advertising. Offset used it to argue that creating a new, more representative image category within its library makes inclusion structurally possible — turning a product feature directly into a cultural proposition for creative professionals.
The Clapboard Score for 'New Stereotypes Available' is 64 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strong conceptual foundation and its Epica Award recognition, offset by the limited number of publicly available creative assets and the absence of independently verified performance data from the Argentine market.
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