#NameTheBias - People Like Us | Clapboard Ad Archive
#NameTheBias, the 2025 campaign from People Like Us and independent studio Worth Your While, attacks one of the most insidiously persistent forms of workplace inequality: name bias in UK recruitment and pay practices. Anchored by a striking two-minute film that blends sparse black-and-white visuals with the piercing urgency of spoken word, the campaign leverages Yasmin Ali’s performance to overturn Shakespeare’s timeworn question—do names really matter?—by laying bare the disproportionate impact of ethnic names on job prospects, career trajectories, and earnings for minority applicants. Rather than resorting to literal depiction, the core creative device aligns with Clapboard’s FORMAT#3—Symbolize the Problem, playing out its metaphor in an everyday scene at a bus stop, where white commuters are welcomed aboard while their ethnic counterparts are shut out, powerfully visualizing the invisible barriers baked into hiring systems. The campaign is timed to Ethnicity Pay Gap Day and underpinned by new data from People Like Us and Censuswide, as well as Oxford research finding ethnic minority candidates must send 60 percent more applications to elicit a callback, with this stark statistic unchanged since the 1960s. Loudly foregrounding the gap between capability and opportunity, the film’s closing line—projected through Ali’s lived perspective—becomes a rallying cry for urgent systemic reform and pay gap transparency. The initiative extends beyond film into a multi-channel effort: OOH billboards riff on job application forms across London, while targeted digital and social content activates the spoken word community to amplify the message through influencer partnerships and networks embedded in People Like Us. A practical layer accompanies the emotive core, with guides hosted online to equip both individuals—often hesitant to raise salary issues—and businesses seeking to reduce systemic bias at source. Building on People Like Us’ history of provocative campaigns—such as Signatures for Signatures and the Autocorrected Pay Gap—the 2025 effort uses a sharply symbolic approach to not just ignite national conversation but directly pressure policymakers, coinciding with government screenings in the House of Lords and Houses of Parliament as a draft bill for ethnicity pay gap reporting moves forward. The campaign is rooted firmly in the public service category, with messaging that explicitly advances two of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals: decent work for all and reduced inequalities. By fusing robust evidence, emotional storytelling, and unmistakably bold creative inference, #NameTheBias surfaces the structural realities that still rule British workplaces, positioning People Like Us as a cross-sector leader in inclusion advocacy. Clapboard rates this 73/100. For the communication industry, #NameTheBias signals a powerful evolution in how systemic discrimination can be confronted—by fusing artful metaphor, data, and activism to frame inequality in a language policymakers, businesses, and the public can no longer ignore.
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