“Bias can be challenging to tackle. It’s human nature to sometimes create narratives in our minds about people we don’t know. However, for young black boys, the narrative created is often a negative one. This campaign needed to get people questioning the stories they make up and what better way to do that than with book covers”.

Shaun Okoh, Senior Strategist, M&C Saatchi, is explaining the strategy behind the agency's powerful new campaign, which successfully harnesses the power of creativity to challenge racial stereotypes.

M&C Saatchi partnered with London-based youth organisation RISE.365 and Clear Channel to create the out of home campaign called Changing Narratives.

RISE.365 works with young people to support them in reaching their goals. It is focused on providing a voice to the youth of today, in order to help them become the future leaders of tomorrow.

Okoh conducted in-depth interviews with Femi, Daniel, Ryan, Lucas, Razaq, Solomon, and Sam about their experiences with bias. Each young man had memories of bad judgements from others, creating negative experiences for them.

The interviews lifted the lid on the real world harms caused by stereotyping. Whether it was being told that their mixed heritage (black and white) made them more tolerable, being randomly stopped and searched by the police for the first time as a scared 12-year-old, or being aggressively arrested at 16 for a crime someone else committed. The campaign draws on a wealth of negative experiences.

Each of these negative narratives to life as a series of book covers. Each cover features a young RISE.365 volunteer paired with a title based upon real judgement they have unfortunately experienced. All of the shocking titles were taken directly from conversations between the young men and the team at  M&C Saatchi.

The young men on the book covers are shown reacting to the negative book titles. These are genuine reactions from their perspectives. An authenticity which shines through the creative execution.

The book covers themselves were designed and meticulously aged to feel as outdated as the stereotyped views that their titles reflect. The initiative aims to educate the broader community, and encourage people to reflect on their own perspectives; to help us move towards a more inclusive and fair society.

Clear Channel is running the campaign across its 3,500 digital out of home sites in the UK.

Okoh added: "I think the work does a fantastic job of drawing attention to such an important issue, however, what I personally love most, is the boys’ fun facial expressions juxtaposing the negative stories people made up about them – showing that, despite racial bias knocking them down, young black guys always get up again”.

This hard-hitting campaign is a powerful reminder of the power of creativity, collaboration and lived experience behind the lens to challenge toxic stereotyping.