Perception Institute’s researches show that a high percentage of American (and other nationalities) unintentionally

make snap judgments about people based on what we see, whether it’s race, age, gender, religion, sexuality, or

disability. This is called implicit bias. The challenge for Ad Council was to demonstrate this to the wider audience as

possible and celebrate unconventional notions of love. The shoot location, Santa Monica, CA, one of the most open

minded place in the world was specifically chosen to demonstrate that everyone, including the most open minded

of us, are affected by implicit bias.

The Ad Council’s Love Has No Labels campaign is based on a filmed live event that surprised

shoppers at the busy 3rd Street Promenade, Santa Monica, California on Valentine’s day 2015.

A video of the stunt was created to maximize sharing of the this important social message.

The call to action drove viewers of the live stunt and video to the Love Has No Labels website where

people were invited to take a test created by the Harvard University and learn further about implicit

bias thanks to content provided by 8 nonprofit

organizations.

Rather than lecture people about bias, we launched a video on Facebook to demonstrate implicit

bias and celebrate unconventional notions of love.

The video posted on Upworthy’s Facebook wall showed a large x-ray installation. It displayed skeletons kissing, hugging, playing and dancing. Those looking on automatically filling in the blanks in their minds. When the people stepped out from behind the screen, to the surprise of the audience, it created the perfect demonstration of implicit bias. An on screen call to action drove people to the

Love Has No Labels website where a test by Harvard University and content provided by 8 nonprofit

organizations educated them about bias and diversity. Later on, the video was posted on other

videosharing sites such as Ad Council’s Youtube channel to drive a wider audience to the website.

The video of the stunt went immediately viral (40 million views in two days). It recently hit 100 million combined views becoming the fastest spreading campaign ever and 2nd most viewed and shared PSA in history after just 3 weeks.

1 billion media impressions.

1 million people took the online test created by Harvard University.

International TV networks talked about the campaign as well as iconic TV shows and influential

Newspapers, websites and blogs.

Funny or Die created a hilarious parody helping the film become part of culture.

Numerous couples used the “Love Has No Labels” online toolkit to post pictures showing their love,

some of these people finding in the campaign an opportunity to courageously post a message to tell

friends and family that they were gay.

Many celebrities shared the campaign including the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama.

According to the Perception Institute, a majority of Americans consider themselves unprejudiced.

But research show that even the most open minded people have implicit bias in built through

society stereotypes, even if they don’t consciously act on it. But addressing this is near impossible

when these same people don’t acknowledge they’re affected by it. Introducing them to the concept

in a surprising manner and driving them to content that can help change behaviors was core to the

strategy of this campaign. People were to never feel shammed but asked to rethink.