Announced yesterday at the SBS Upfronts, SBS Media will launch the Diversity Works Challenge on Australia Day, 26 January 2017. The initiative calls on Australia’s most creative minds to develop an advertising campaign that demonstrates diversity and, in doing so, reflects today’s Australia.

Nearly one in five Australians speak a language other than English at home with 47 per cent having one or both parents born overseas.

The Diversity Works Challenge aims to encourage the Australian advertising industry to think with diversity, by setting a diversity challenge for all national clients to take part in.

The Diversity Works Challenge will offer one million dollars of free airtime across SBS TV and digital assets to the brand or agency with the best campaign that prominently features Australia’s diversity, with the television commercial to launch in primetime on SBS.

SBS Director of Media Sales Andrew Cook said: “At SBS, we’ve been asking everyone to think with diversity when it comes to how media is planned. We’ve been asking brands and agencies to consider the ever-changing population of the new multicultural Australia, and consider that the media has a certain sameness about it that has not really changed as Australia has been changing.”

SBS is calling on creatives and clients to take part in this initiative to prove that thinking with diversity works.”

Entries open on 26 January 2017, where agencies and brands will be able to submit their creative concept online before 31 March. A judging panel will review all submissions that meet the criteria before selecting up to eight finalists to pitch their idea to a panel of industry experts.

The winner will be announced in May 2017, giving the brand or agency three months to produce the advertisement before it premieres on SBS before the end of 2017.