My Best Flaw is a campaign out of Brazil’s Papel & Caneta that talks about diversity in advertising, in for viewing right before Cannes. Via Adweek:
Every country has to do better in their efforts to elevate diversity in advertising—and the U.S. is certainly far from perfect. But Brazil has a particularly big problem when it comes to inclusion. That’s why one nonprofit creative collective is calling its nation out ahead of next week’s 2018 Cannes Lions Festival, when top marketers from around the world will be spotlighted in Cannes, France.
Describing itself as a nonprofit collective made up of global leaders and young people from creative agencies across the world “who are tired of waiting for change to happen,” Papel & Caneta (Paper & Pen) dropped this hauntingly beautiful video that, through poetic song and dance, reframes what Brazil considers “flaws” as just what its country’s agencies need to thrive.
In “Meu Melhor Defeito” (“My Best Flaw”), created by Brendo + Gonfiantini in partnership with production studio Paranoid, the nonprofit reimagines “problems” that might deter agencies from hiring Brazilian creatives as strengths. The spot, for example, urges ad folk to not hide the fact that they were raised in a ghetto or by a “bricklayer,” but embrace elements of their past, because what makes them different “makes a difference.”
In a statement, Papel & Caneta pointed out some disturbing facts about agency culture in Brazil. First of all, the nonprofit said 53 percent of the Brazilian population is black, yet they account for just 35 out of 1,000 agency employees across the 50 largest shops in the country. Papel & Caneta reported 90 percent of women and 76 percent of men in Sao Paulo’s communications market alone have suffered from some form of moral or sexual assault.