Millward Brown: African

Any theme, even the toughest to deal with or to understand, can be translated and explained through a graph. This is the concept that drives the new campaign created for the Millward Brown Brazil ad hoc research institute by the agency Young & Rubicam Brazil. The action, entitled “Ethnics”, counts on three print-media ads – “Muslim”, “Jewish” and “African” – and uses a clean and incisive language to give people a new look into controversial subjects and highlight the importance of the studies performed by the advertiser to eliminate preconceived ideas.

The first ad transforms a Muslim’s veil into a sort of graph, which makes it clear that one should not generalize with regards to those that follow the religion. The piece “Jewish” brings a kippa as a graph and compares the proportion of the territory dominated by the Palestinians in comparison to the Jewish territory, in 1946 and presently.

The last one of the series shows a typical African woman with a round earring, which remits to a pie graph, with the predominance of blue and a small “slice” in red. To the side, the legend explains: the red slice corresponds to the number of men from Zimbabwe who believe that having sexual intercourse with a virgin can cure someone that has the HIV virus. The blue part corresponds to the great majority that doesn’t believe this. The green, which doesn’t appear on the graph, represents those men that were cured of the virus after having sexual intercourse with a virgin: in other words, none. All pieces have the campaign signature: “One graph says it all. Millward Brown”.

The creation was by Laura Esteves and Daniel Salles, under the creative direction of Rui Branquinho, Flávio Casarotti and Sérgio Fonseca.