Channel 4 isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

We exist to promote diversity and provoke debate.

From the broadcast of the first lesbian kiss, to one of the first black sitcoms, to our coverage of the Paralympics. Everyday, we give a voice to minority groups, challenge stereotypes and fight discrimination.

Simply put, if people aren’t complaining about us, we’re doing it wrong.

Our complaints prove everything we stand for.

Most companies try to hide their complaints. Especially when they’re homophobic, racist, sexist, classist, bigoted, blasphemous, vulgar, anti-disability or just plain out of order.

We decided to celebrate them by turning them into branded content that stood up for everything we believe.

This was all the more important in the wake of the Brexit vote, when hate speech was on the rise:

“BREXIT 'MAJOR INFLUENCE' IN RACISM AND HATE CRIME RISE” – BBC

"The feeling is that a lot of people believe they have the right to express their racist feelings or to show hatred… It's fairly obvious that Brexit has been a major influence."

- Eryl Jones

We trawled through thousands of real complaints (we get a lot of them!) and selected the most provocative, ridiculous and shocking.

We then invited our on-screen talent to help us celebrate them, in a long-form film. It ran across all of our TV and social channels, as well as being promoted by our talent across their social feeds.

This film was supported by a series of 35 shorter branding films, based on individual complaints, as well as out-of-home, continuity and social activity.

We even changed our entire back-end system for receiving complaints and now share all our complaints with all staff every morning.

“VIRAL BRITISH TV AD 'COMPLAINTS WELCOME' CALLS OUT HURTFUL STEREOTYPES… THEY ARE NOT TRYING TO PLEASE VIEWERS WHO ARE WONT TO DISCRIMINATE... WITH MANY USERS THANKING THE NETWORK FOR CALLING OUT VIEWERS FOR THEIR HURTFUL COMPLAINTS.”

– Newsweek

“HITTING BACK AT HATE SPEECH”.

– Daily Mail (ironic!)

The launch film went viral and has (so far) been seen by over 37 million people – over 60% of the UK. And our hyper-targeted system of branding films delivered over 50 million impressions.

We saw dramatic increases to our brand metrics and 43% uplift to All4 programme views during campaign period.

Over 50% of viewers claimed to have a more positive opinion of C4 after seeing the new branding.