Breaking Bi Pride UK's brand
A brand can be a powerful tool for creating interaction. The strongest target a specific audience with specific guidelines, because that hand-in-glove precision increases engagement. However, as the focus on a core audience increases, the audiences outside of the target can become alienated. The only way to connect with those fringe audiences is to do something that promotes the core values while behaving in a way that is the exact antithesis of the brands guidelines.
Engaging the audience beyond
Bi Pride UK's mission is to create spaces where people who experience attraction beyond gender can freely celebrate themselves and their identities. Because their brand focuses on self-expression as the core value, it speaks loudly to zoomers and young millennials who are passionate, confident, and unapologetic about who they are. But, it can be off-putting to those who don’t see themselves as flag-wavers. So, in order to engage a larger (and more reserved) audience, we contradicted this value.
The final ad begins with a figure that remains unchanged no matter what label, group, or gender describes it, and ends with the tag We love that. This downplays the value of personal identity while emphasising acceptance, and unassumingly says — being Bi is more about expressing love than it is about self-expression.
This is what we call antithetical branding