Art Gap
Standard Chartered UAE
Issue 54 | March 2020
Agency
TBWA\RAAD
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer: Walid Kanaan Executive Creative Director: Manuel Borde Creative Director: Sandeep Fernandes Senior Copywriter: Doug Mackay Senior Digital Art Director: Mahesh Powar Senior Designer: Rijin Kunnath Art Director: Balu Puthalath Senior Art Director: Sumanth Wilkins Motion Graphics: Lucas Pimenta, Camilo Rojas, Mohamed Treka
Production Team
Head of Production: Rouba Asmar Producer: Gloria Abou Diwan Director: Martin Velkov Audio Engineer: Bashar Najjar
Other Credits
Head of Strategy: Remie Abdo Regional Account Director: Monisha Mirchandani Account Manager: Ashleigh Morgan Account Executive: Christine Dias Social Media Executive: Adnan Ahmed
Date
April 2019
Background
Standard Chartered Bank stands for ‘Here For Good’. A promise to improve communities. And it walks the talk: In 2016, it signed the Fair-Pay-Charter and pledged to pay men and women equally. In 2017, it signed the United-Nations Women-Empowerment-Principles in support. In 2019, it was recognized on the Bloomberg Gender-Equality-Index for the fourth year. Currently, 46% of its global personnel is women, including 13 CEOs. In the United Arab Emirates, Standard Chartered Bank has an added incentive to champion equality: a commitment to the nation’s vision of being amongst the world’s top 25 countries for gender equality. Standard Chartered Bank Dubai has 4 women in senior management, including an Emirati CEO. Outside the bank, Standard Chartered Bank seeks to reach equality, inclusion and female empowerment in the world. Lately, a study done by University of Oxford emerged, highlighting that works by women artists sell for 47.6% less than those by men. A shocking pay gap that triggered Standard Chartered Bank to react.
Idea
Introducing: The Art Gap Exhibition. An exhibition based on the belief that if women artists are paid 47.6% less, they need to paint 47.6% less. The idea was to bring together a collective of 19 Emirati and expat women artists from 11 nationalities to add their voices to the global gender parity conversation. They showcased their best art pieces, but this time, incomplete. They painted 47.6% less of their canvas, matching the exact percentage of their pay gap. The blank space on the canvas highlighted what the world would miss if it doesn’t treat women and men equally. The sum of the 19 incomplete paintings created a powerful visual statement that showed, in the most tangible way, the shocking gender pay disparity in the art world. The Art Gap Exhibition was a global innovation, a way of creatively leveraging scientific research to bring about change.
Results
1000 Visitors attended, including dignitaries like UAE’s Minister of Tolerance, the DG of Dubai Department of Information, the Deputy CEO for Financial Markets Operations, representatives from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and UK Trade Commission for MEA. 7,500 pledges for equal pay during the event. 20,000 USD for the 19 artworks, although sales wasn’t an objective. 1.4MM USD in earned media, including the New York Times, Time Magazine, Reuters, BBC, LA Times, The Independent, Times of India, Financial Times, The Art Newspaper, Harvard Business Review, UniLad, LadBible, Mashable, Cosmopolitan, VICE, Gulf Business, and regional TV channels. +20MM social media impressions. 9 Leading regional social influencers, with more than 6.4million followers, spread the word – of their own initiative.