Recent years have seen the emergence of a deadly culture war with the trans community at the centre.

Popular media figures spread misinformation to loyal audiences of millions; even within the queer community, splinter movements such as the LGB alliance try to remove Trans from the LGBTQ+ movement they founded; and the UK government consistently refuses to protect trans rights through legislation, or even recognise nonbinary gender identity in law.

This is reflected in a rise in trans hate speech and violence in the streets, with 2021 surpassing 2020 as the deadliest year on record globally for gender non-conforming people.

Even in Grey’s own offices in WPP’s London campus, UK laws regulating public spaces and workplaces prevent the installation of adequate gender-neutral bathroom facilities for gender non-conforming staff.

How could we do something?

To demonstrate the power of visibility to effect positive change, we took over the most visible asset we had to leverage – our own Agency identity.

Starting on Transgender Day of Visibility, we rebranded from Grey London to They London.

Why “They”? In English there is no gender-neutral pronoun for an individual - just “he”, “she”. “They” has been adopted as the only neutral option by many nonbinary and gender non-conforming people. But it’s controversial – often ridiculed and the UK government in 2021 refused to acknowledge it in law.

What started within Grey’s own trans community, we sent out to the whole advertising industry with a targeted PR approach, covering titles in the UK, US, and as far as Australia. As government policy and rhetoric left the community behind, we put our whole corporate identity to use to make trans and nonbinary people unignorable in our industry.

The Trans community faces many issues which a communication agency can’t solve.

But we can help Visibility.

Visibility has driven LGBTQ+ progress and acceptance. However trans Visibility lagged behind others.

Mainstream media was part of the problem. The months immediately preceding our activation saw mass walkouts from Netflix staff over the platform’s promotion of transphobic views; the LGBTQ+ protests outside BBC headquarters.

Our strategy was to influence the influencers – the media industry, to wake them up to their power to help, by using the thing they did best – visibility.

We therefore focused our attention on them, speaking directly to our target audience.

Our targeted PR activity sent a powerful statement to our clients, external partners, and peers in the industry, trade media within our own industry, opening their eyes to their potential, and working on the Transgender day of visibility to create maximum impact.

Much like our statement, our creative execution was simple.

We redesigned our iconic logo from GREY to THEY, in the colours of the trans-inclusive pride progress flag. We rolled the rebrand out across all owned media touchpoints, taking over the welcome screens of our building, updating email signatures to our clients and external partners, and rebranding all They London social channels to spread the message to our wider network.

We shared our full statement in trade media, targeting advertising and marketing titles with news of the rebrand and our call to action to the wider industry. We also seeded examples of trans-inclusive work from our own agency, from They London’s own Incomplete Without the T campaign for Gay Times Amplifund, to network creative like Pantene’s Isa’s Quinceanera.

All our media releases included links to where vulnerable trans and nonbinary people can find support resources for mental health and legal aid.

The impact of our activation was immediate, with news of our rebrand and the accompanying statement quickly spreading through industry press and shared on social media channels by industry commentators, LGBTQ+ blogs and advocacy groups.

Industry media institutions like Campaign, AdAge and PR Week exposed our statement to a total potential audience of 3.26 million people around the world.

The conversation continued into social media, where our message of solidarity and support for the trans community was shared by LGBTQ+ organisations in the communications industry such as Outvertising and Trans Media Watch.

On LinkedIn alone, the announcement of our rebrand saw higher engagement than our last ten posts combined, garnering 1,738 engagements and reaching an audience of over 27,000 with no paid media support. But our most meaningful engagement came from the trans and nonbinary community directly, with one member commenting, “Thank you for doing this, THEY London”.