2014 Gold Best Writing in Any Medium

How did the campaign make a difference? In the UK, once someone has a criminal conviction they have to declare it by ticking a box on a form whenever they apply for a job. This makes securing employment almost impossible and being unemployed makes them significantly more likely to reoffend – in turn costing the UK economy £11bn per year.

BITC is attempting tackle this by calling on UK employers to create a fair opportunity for ex-offenders by removing this tick box from initial application forms.

During the campaign, 17 companies removed the box indicating whether an applicant has a criminal record, allowing all applicants to be assessed equally. The most notable of these is Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP, who publicly cited the Second Chance online film as the trigger for deciding to ‘ban the box’.

Strategy BITC’s challenge was to get 20 new companies to put in the considerable amount of work required to ‘Ban The Box’.

The insight was that prejudice against ex-offenders is one of the last socially acceptable prejudices – it is seemingly perfectly OK to assume, or even declare, that you don’t feel comfortable being around or working with someone who has been in prison.

The strategy was to create a moment where people were confronted by their own prejudice – maybe one they didn’t even know they had – and make them fundamentally question the validity of this in themselves and in others.

BITC wanted to build something into the experience of the communication itself: to create a subverted expectation that would leave people questioning themselves.

Creativity An interactive YouTube ad showed a young interviewee explaining that he’d recently left prison. But each time the viewer hit ‘skip’ the exoffender became more and more distressed. The film ended with him expressing disappointment that the viewer didn’t want to give an ex-offender a second chance and directing them to the BITC website. Conversely, if the viewer let the man speak freely he grew in confidence and thanked the viewer for listening.

Press ads recounted the thoughts of a recruiter as they read an exoffender’s CV – writing off the perfect candidate because of their criminal record. Versions were sent to heads of HR as DM, with recipients invited to BITC Responsible Business week to find out more.

One radio ad mirrored the CV print, whilst another imitated a radio phone-in where an ex-offender was cut off every time they dialled in.

This tension between what the viewer expected and what they experienced gave the ads cutthrough and memorability, despite a distinctly un-sexy subject matter.

Results This campaign has been five times more effective at opening up jobs for ex-offenders than similar efforts in the USA. 17 organisations, collectively employing 175,000 people, signed up to ban the box – no small task, requiring a major overhaul of the recruitment process.

Most notable is Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP, one of the world’s most prestigious law firms, who cited the video as their trigger: “We’d been talking about it for a while but the spark for change came when a Partner at the firm shared the film with the HR and PR teams. Seeing the issue from a different perspective encouraged everyone to take action and within weeks we’d "banned the box".

627 ex-offenders have now found employment, translating to a saving of approximately £29.5million to the UK economy.

The campaign also triggered global media coverage, reaching an estimated 5 million people.