Who: Black & Abroad, with McCann Canada for strategy and creative; Initiative Canada for media.
What: “See You There,” a campaign that helps the brand’s Black customers see themselves in new vacation spots this year, while also bringing attention to encoded bias in AI systems.
When & Where: The campaign began Monday (March 18) using email, digital and out-of-home.
Why: Launched in 2015, Black & Abroad has put out innovative, and award-winning campaigns rooted in insights about the unique aspects and challenges of travel for Black consumers. In 2019 it was “Go Back to Africa,” followed by “Black Elevation Map” in 2022.
The intent of “See You There” is to create a direct marketing campaign using photos of Black travellers taken on previous Black & Abroad trips fed into an generative AI to create “hyperreal” photos of consumers in different destinations featured by Black & Abroad for 2024, including Senegal, Ghana and France.
The underlying idea was that any trip starts with people picturing themselves in a new destination.
Why II: When the team at McCann began the process, they saw first-hand how artificial intelligence systems have been created with bias built-in—lightening skin and straightening hair, or putting Black people into scenes of poverty.
McCann didn’t want to say which AI platform they were using because the problem is widespread, but said they were working with “one of the large, trainable models.” This real experience inspired them to add a new element to the campaign.
“It's pretty crazy that what started off as an innocent email campaign to re-engage our past clients ended up being a crash course on the baked-in algorithmic biases plaguing Al's perceived objectivity,” said Eric Martin, chief creative officer, Black & Abroad.
“Yes, we're a luxury travel brand – but there’s a responsibility for us to shed light on an oversight of this magnitude.”
How: McCann created personalized emails and landing pages featuring photos of previous customers in locations they haven’t yet been to, delivering on the original “See you there” concept.
“We started this project with an earnest desire to visualize Black & Abroad’s guests at its upcoming destinations, and are proud of having pushed through to achieving that goal,” said Ian Mackenzie, chief creative officer at McCann Worldgroup Canada. Mackenzie was creative lead on “Go Back to Africa” at FCB/Six and “Black Elevation Map” at Performance Art, which was recently folded into McCann.
How II: Along with that deliverable, McCann created SeeYouThere.ai as an informational editorial package to spotlight the encoded flaws in AI systems and illustrate the problem with real examples of how the generative AI systems would lighten skin, straighten hair, and even put individuals in scenes of poverty or trauma.
“Generative AI tools are giving us ways to personalize our campaigns to degrees that were not possible or realistic even a year ago,” said Mackenzie. “However, we believe the process was much harder than it would have been had we been training our models on white travelers. And while we won’t solve bias in AI overnight, ‘See You There’ provides powerful breadcrumbs for us to follow as we push into an exciting, inclusive, AI-powered future.”
OOH posters and billboards were created to push people to the SeeYouThere.ai website. Initiative was able to create what it describes as a “massive pool of donated media inventory” online and in OOH, including Times Square. And working with data partners such as GumGum and Zefr, they targeted online content featuring white travelers with digital ads that asked, “Where is the Black traveler?”
And we quote: “While AI can often feel like a space for endless opportunities, we can’t be afraid to test its abilities and hold it to a higher standard… This campaign is a timely reminder that the path to representation is a journey worth exploring.” —Kent Johnson, chief strategy officer, Black & Abroad.
