Month: May 2023

People Like Us highlights ‘autocorrect bias’ as it launches national campaign to correct pay gap disparities

Stuart Mitchell

Not-for-profit People Like Us is highlighting autocorrect failures, often leading to misidentification and a sense of exclusion for individuals with diverse names. Their latest campaign taps into this insight to help underline the pay gap between ethnicities. Their national ‘Autocorrected Pay Gap’ billboard campaign went live UK wide on April 4th, and uses real autocorrect examples to highlight that subconscious bias in favour of British-heritage names affects everything from autocorrect to your pay packet. In 2022, People Like Us research showed workers from Black, Asian, Mixed Race and minority ethnic…

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IPA Council split after deepfake debate on threat of AI to adland

Stuart Mitchell

Agency leaders are split on whether AI is a threat to the advertising business. This is the conclusion of the recent IPA Council debate on the subject, in which the arguments for and against the motion were presented via AI-created and deepfake deployed versions of former IPA President Julian Douglas and IPA Director General Paul Bainsfair. It was decided by just one vote that AI does not spell trouble for advertising agencies. The films were created by Morten Legarth, Creative Director at VCCP, and generated by AI – the scripts…

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In Lebanon, women fight period poverty and taboos to promote menstrual health

Stuart Mitchell

Safe and affordable menstrual hygiene products are essential to ensuring the sexual and reproductive health of women, girls and all people who menstruate. But for those without sufficient economic resources, obtaining access to such products is an ongoing struggle. Known as period poverty, this lack of access—exacerbated by longstanding taboos around menstruation—remains a key barrier to menstrual health around the world. It can also have social and economic consequences, forcing those who can’t afford menstrual hygiene products to stay home from work or school while menstruating.   In Lebanon, where…

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Oxfam calls for urgent action to close $27 trillion funding black hole faced by low-and-middle income countries

Stuart Mitchell

Low-and-middle income countries face a $27 trillion black hole – accumulating at around $3.9 trillion a year to 2030 –when it comes to meeting costs of climate-related loss and damages, adaptation, and mitigation measures, along with their health, education and social protection needs, new Oxfam analysis finds. Oxfam is calling for rich countries to borrow $11.5 trillion to fund an historic “climate debt swap” with poorer countries, in addition to finally honouring their aid commitments, of which they are in arrears to the tune of $6.5 trillion. Progressive wealth taxes…

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Saving Our Wild Isles: Sir David Attenborough warns ‘this starts and ends with us’ in new UK nature documentary

Stuart Mitchell

The UK’s three leading conservation charities – the RSPB, the National Trust and WWF launched a brand new documentary narrated by Sir David Attenborough and produced by Silverback Films last month on Sunday 9 April. Saving Our Wild Isles highlights the people working hard to halt the alarming decline in nature as well as focusing on the wildlife and habitats at risk in the UK – one of the most nature depleted counties in the world. “In this film, we’ll meet inspiring people, young and old, who are working to…

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