Working with Initiative Canada, Black & Abroad, the world’s foremost travel & lifestyle brand catering to the modern Black traveler, has partnered with Shutterstock to launch the latest evolution of their “See You There” campaign, aimed at addressing instances of racial bias in generative AI by creating a more diverse dataset of Black travel photography.

In March 2024, Initiative Canada partnered with McCann Canada and Black & Abroad on a campaign to re-engage with past guests to drive new bookings. The campaign used gen AI to imagine past guests at the brand’s upcoming travel destinations. However, during the campaign development a shocking and ugly truth was revealed as outputs from the generative platforms lightened guests’ skin, straightened their hair, and generated them into scenes of poverty, suggesting that these models have been trained on incomplete and biased photographic data.

Recognizing that gen AI’s biased outputs are linked to the lack of representation in travel photography, Initiative set out to bring the Black traveler to the forefront, brokering a deal between Black & Abroad and Shutterstock, leading global platform for creative resources. The partnership, which aligns with Shutterstock’s existing commitment to represent a globally diverse world, calls on their network of 2.1 million contributors to create new photography and videography depicting Black travelers in diverse destinations – informed by insights from Black & Abroad’s work with gen AI. Because of long-standing systems of exclusion and marginalization, fewer photos exist of Black travellers in iconic places and major tourism landmarks, resulting in less data for the generative models to be trained on.

Black & Abroad joins Shutterstock as the first aggregator account of its kind, collecting and curating all content created under this partnership, and making it broadly available for licensing. Together the brands have launched a $15,000 USD fund to support content creators around the world and capture a more diverse collection of travel imagery.

“We believe that our work can not only ‘be good’ but ‘do good,’” says Helen Galanis, CEO, Initiative. “Our work with Black & Abroad and Shutterstock is a shining example of that commitment; by combatting this systemic bias in gen AI and travel photography, we are adding real value to our client and the industry. Of course, we always want to improve and create a better media company, but through partnerships like this, we have the potential to create a better industry, and maybe even a better world.”

About Initiative

Initiative unlocks business growth for the world’s most ambitious brands. We believe in the power of media to reshape our industry and orchestrate a brand’s entire consumer experience, by balancing both what unites people and what makes them different. When brands unite people in culture, they build Fame, and when brands connect individuals to their unique journeys, they build customer Flow.

Media responsibility is at the forefront of everything we do, whether it’s creating media plans that reflect the diversity of our communities, promote brand safety, and foster sustainability. Our agency celebrates diversity in an inclusive environment where all of our 9,000+ strong talent across 90+ markets feel seen, heard, and valued. Our vision is to create not only a better media company, but also a better media industry, and maybe even a better world.

 COMvergence ranked Initiative #1 in new business globally in 2022. Initiative was Festival of Media Network Agency of the Year (North America and Latin America) in 2022, among other industry accolades.

About Black & Abroad

Black & Abroad is a multi-platform travel & lifestyle company. Since 2015, our digital campaigns, international events and travel experiences have redefined exploration for the modern Black traveler. We pride ourselves on working together to connect people all over the world through culturally conscious & thought driven initiatives centered around exploration while providing crowd-sourced information hubs for urban travelers. Seeing a need to elevate the community through world exploration, our company was created to expose the world to nuanced, diverse narratives within the travel community.

About Shutterstock, Inc.

Shutterstock, Inc. is a premier partner for transformative brands, digital media and marketing companies, empowering the world to create with confidence. Fueled by millions of creators around the world and a fearless approach to product innovation, Shutterstock is the leading global platform for licensing from the most extensive and diverse collection of high-quality 3D models, videos, music, photographs, vectors and illustrations. From the world's largest content marketplace, to breaking news and A-list entertainment editorial access, to all-in-one content editing platform and studio production service – all using the latest in innovative technology – Shutterstock offers the most comprehensive selection of resources to bring storytelling to life.

About McCann Canada

McCann helps brands build the most meaningful brand platforms that drive exponential growth and leave a lasting impact on culture. Founded over 100 years ago with their own platform, “Truth Well Told,” McCann is the world’s leading advertising agency network, creating some of the most creatively and commercially impactful advertising globally. McCann is the founding agency of McCann Worldgroup, a creatively driven global marketing company.

The team behind the award-winning “Go Back to Africa” and “Black Elevation Map” campaigns debuts a powerful AI-driven commerce activation that puts customers at the center of a bold new experience while addressing deep technological bias

Today, Black & Abroad, the brand dedicated to redefining world experiences for the modern Black traveler, announced the launch of “See You There,” a new initiative that leverages AI to help its customers imagine their next tourism adventure, showcasing the beauty and luxury of international travel for the Black community.

Created in partnership with agency McCann Canada, “See You There” activates Black and Abroad’s prolific archive of content featuring photos of guest from its previous trips and turns it into a powerful 1:1 experience. The campaign, based on the idea that every trip starts by picturing yourself there, uses generative AI to create personalized landing pages trained on selections from the brand’s catalog of more than 11,000 photos of guests from previous trips. The landing pages, filled with hyperreal images of each guest at Black & Abroad’s upcoming 2024 destinations (such as Senegal, Ghana, and France) paint a new picture of the future of travel.

An alarming path to finding the joy

The campaign presents past Black & Abroad travelers with joyous, inspirational images depicting them in exciting places they have yet to visit. The process of developing the work, however, uncovered a darker truth: a world of bias encoded in AI models. Outputs from the generative platforms used tended to lighten guests skin, straighten their hair, and even generate them into scenes of poverty, suggesting that the base generative models used have been trained on incomplete and biased photographic data. They also struggled to generate accurate images of Black & Abroad guests at specific destinations, such as Macchu Pichu in Peru and tapas bars in Barcelona.

In addition to the consumer campaign, Black & Abroad is releasing its findings on AI biases as a way to advance the conversation around bias and AI to the larger travel industry. In asking “Where is the Black traveler?” the campaign aims to authentically celebrate Black joy in travel – and overcome AI biases that may stand in the way.

The findings are presenting in a powerful editorial package at seeyouthere.ai.

“It's pretty crazy that what started off as an innocent email campaign to reengage our past clients ended up being a crash course on the baked-in algorithmic biases plaguing Al's perceived objectivity,” said Eric Martin, Chief Creative Officer, Black & Abroad. “Yes, we're a luxury travel brand – but there’s a responsibility for us to shed light on an oversight of this magnitude, inciting a call to action to mitigate the potential of the more serious consequences that can arise in other industries as a result of these inherent prejudices.”

“As AI begins to ingrain itself in our everyday lives, our duty to make it accessible to everyone becomes even more apparent. While AI can often feel like a space for endless opportunities, we can’t be afraid to test its abilities and hold it to a higher standard,” said Kent Johnson, Chief Strategy Officer, Black & Abroad. “This campaign is a timely reminder that the path to representation is a journey worth exploring.”

“We started this project with an earnest desire to visualize Black & Abroad’s guests at its upcoming destinations and are proud of having pushed through to achieving that goal. Generative AI tools are giving us ways to personalize our campaigns to degrees that were not possible or realistic even a year ago,” said Ian Mackenzie, Chief Creative Officer, McCann Worldgroup Canada. “However we believe the process was much harder than it would have been had we been training our models on white travelers. And while we won’t solve bias in AI overnight, ‘See you there’ provides powerful breadcrumbs for us to follow as we push into an exciting, inclusive, AI-powered future.”

Since 2015, Black & Abroad has been a global leader in redefining representation in the travel industry, reframing the way the industry sees the Black community and vice versa. The brand has worked with the team behind “See you there” on previous campaigns, including “Go Back To Africa” (2019) and “Black Elevation Map” (2022).

Initiative Canada is leading the media strategy behind the campaign, which leverages an advanced multi-vendor audience solution to reach Black travelers. This audience approach will be activated across a massive pool of donated media inventory both online and offline including placements in Time Square. Digital media will leverage image recognition software and data partners such as GumGum and Zefr to target the overwhelming amount of online content featuring white travelers and juxtapose it with the campaign message of “where is the Black traveler?” for the greatest impact.

To learn more, visit seeyouthere.ai.

About Black and Abroad
Black & Abroad is a multi-platform travel & lifestyle company. Since 2015, our digital campaigns, international events and travel experiences have redefined exploration for the modern Black traveler. We pride ourselves on working together to connect people all over the world through culturally conscious & thought driven initiatives centered around exploration while providing crowd-sourced information hubs for urban travelers. Seeing a need to elevate the community through world exploration, our company was created to expose the world to nuanced, diverse narratives within the travel community. blackandabroad.com

About McCann Worldgroup

McCann Worldgroup, part of the Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG), is a leading global creative solutions company. The company is united across 100+ countries by a mission to help brands earn a meaningful role in people's lives. McCann Worldgroup was named the world's most creatively effective marketing services company by The Effie Awards for 2022 for the fourth consecutive year. The core Worldgroup network is comprised of McCann, MRM, CRAFT, and FutureBrand, and partners with Momentum Worldwide, Weber Shandwick and UM to deliver solutions across the entire marketing spectrum. 

Contact:

Meredith Luerssen

Associate Director, Communications
McCann Worldgroup

1 929-691-0526
meredith.luerssen@mccann.com

Credits

Agency: McCann Canada
Chief Creative Officer: Ian Mackenzie
Creative Director: Pedro Izzo
Art Director: Sydney Gittens
Copywriter: Leo Ding
Group Director, Product Development: Arnaud Icard
Senior Product Designer: Thiago Santarem
Executive Creative Director: Colin Craig
Associate Creative Director: Elijah Di Gangi
Designer: Pedro Izzo
SVP, Director of Production: Stef Fabich
Project Manager: Nikhil Bijlani
Director of Production: Gary Gimelfarb
Senior Analyst: Abdul Dau
Associate Strategy Director: Mitch Wong
Senior Manager, Platforms: Luis Pinto
Senior Email Developer: David Imbrogno
Developer: Anthony Pilger
Motion Designer: Jason Kan
Photo Retoucher: Jean-Pierre Goulet
Production: Dan Dragicevic
Production Lead: Bradley Hodgkinson
Global EVP Chief Diversity Equity and Inclusion Officer: Singleton Beato
President: Ryan Timms
EVP, Managing Director: Stefanie Kubanka
Chief Operating Officer: Elizabeth Sellors

Media: Initiative Canada
Chief Strategy Officer: Sammy Rifai
VP, Head of Creative Partnerships: Chris Gairdner
Group Strategy Director: Christian Kern
Project Manager: Ramzi Thabit
Senior Communications Designer: Hawie Kenea
Senior Communications Designer: Bethany Coke
Manager, Creative Partnerships: Samantha Rosenberg
Vice President, Head of Social, Kinesso: Tyler Dmytrow
Senior Vice President, Client Strategy and Growth, Kinesso: Olivier Leblond

Production: The Den Editorial
Editor: Tania Mesta
Colorist: Gabe Sanchez
Managing Director: Laura Macauley
Executive Producer: Jennifer Mersis
Sr. Producer: Kortney Rubottom

Production: School Editorial
Editor: Lauren Horn
Producer: Steve Villeseche
Executive Producer: Yumi Suyama

Audio: Grayson Music Group
Senior Producer: Nicholas Shaw
Voice/Session Director: Mark Domitric
Engineer: Vlad Nikolic

Founders Kent Johnson & Eric Martin chat with Billboard about the advertising industry and the recognition of the company’s “Black Elevation Map” for Ad of the Year at ADCOLOR 2023.

Read the full article here: https://www.billboard.com/business/business-news/adcolor-2023-conference-more-diversity-advertising-1235543257/

Two years after its provocative and acclaimed pan-Africa tourism campaign “Go Back To Africa,” travel brand Black & Abroad has launched a powerful, data- driven domestic travel platform: “The Black Elevation Map”. 

Residing at BlackElevationMap.com, the platform takes cultural data, including Black population data, historical markers, Black-owned businesses and social media activity, and visualizes it as points of interest on a dynamic, searchable elevation map of the United States. The greater the density of data, the higher the elevation. 

“From redlining to modern urban planning, you don’t have to look far to see ways in which maps have been used to marginalize, divide and oppress communities around the world,” says Eric Martin, Chief Creative Officer and co-founder, Black & Abroad. “We wanted to help Black travelers see the country in a way that prioritizes and celebrates the contributions of folks who look like us – and facilitates travel choices that deepen engagement within our community.

Repurposing a traditional elevation map is a way for us to weave joy and uplift into the story, the experience, and our interpretation of the data.”

In addition to thousands of places of interest, the Black Elevation Map includes 12 curated city guides and 10 national guides, that include Black-owned wineries (“Melanin Vines”), notable start-up companies (“Black Silicon Valley”) and restaurants that fuelled civil rights (“Civil Bites”).

The project is the second major collaboration between Black & Abroad and the team at creative-data advertising agency Performance Art. In 2019, that team launched “Go Back To Africa”, which led to a measurable shift in sentiment and usage of the racial slur, and won nearly every major global advertising award, including the Grand Prix in Creative Data at Cannes, the D&AD Black Pencil, and the Global Grand Effie in Positive Change.

“We’re inspired by the relentless positivity at the heart of the Black & Abroad brand, and wanted to once again explore what happens when you push a bold, brand idea into a sophisticated technology ecosystem,” says Ian Mackenzie, Chief Creative Officer, Performance Art. “We know the data we’re visualizing represents just a fraction of actual Black cultural contribution. We see this as part of an ongoing conversation, and a conceptual counterpoint to a long history of maps created with harmful and unacknowledged biases.”

The Black Elevation Map is launching with a 60-second film called “A Hymn Away From Home”, directed by Kelly Fyffe-Marshall (whose “Black Bodies” was an official selection of TIFF 2020) and produced by Alfredo Films. The film combines aspirational footage of more than 30 business owners from across America with iconic images of mountains, and original poetry commissioned and performed by Washington D.C.-based poet Jasmine Mans (“Black Girl, Call Home”).

The project’s other contributors include designer Tré Seals, whose “Martin” typeface was inspired by protest posters from the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike. Seals also created an original set of icons for the project, inspired by a survey of African symbology.

Site functionality includes the ability to create and email “favorites,” an “Add to map” feature, search by city, a freestyle explore map mode, a Black travel social media feed, and buttons that enable users to toggle between several powerful elevation-based data visualizations. The map also pulls in Black travel-related social media conversations from Twitter and Instagram based on hashtag use, categorized across three main streams, for a total of 1,500 social sources across 53 unique embedded data feeds.

“We have always seen an opportunity to elevate the community through world exploration,” says Kent Johnson, Chief Strategy Officer and co-founder Black & Abroad. “The Black Elevation Map is a way for us to share the brand’s positive view from a domestic travel standpoint, while encouraging exploration across our diverse community. We’ll always have miles to go. We hope this map helps with the journey.”

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The data journey.

Data is at the heart of the platform. To help fulfil on the promise of visualizing the heights of The Culture, Performance Art and Acxiom (IPG’s data arm) examined a wide range of data sources and sets. The process considered scale, quality, accessibility across all 50 states, ethical sourcing and race-based bias. Current data sets include self-reported Black-owned business listings from Yelp and Google, as well as U.S. Census Bureau data and The Historical Markers Database.

The platform has been built to be able to integrate new data sources, visualizations, content and functionality as they become known and available. The team is also working with data and analytics firm Dun & Bradstreet on a future iteration of the platform that will provide more points of interest, and a more complete picture of Black-owned businesses in the United States.

Helping our audience find the map.

In addition to the innovations at the heart of the platform itself, Performance Art has collaborated with its global media partners within IPG to develop a technically sophisticated launch plan for the project’s online video, banner and social media advertising assets.

Kinesso, IPG’s marketing and media data engine, has pioneered an innovative approach to defining a traveler audience based on cultural insights, which, when combined with digital media from Kinesso’s IMPACT marketplace – a group that supports BIPOC-owned media inventory sources and creators – they will help the media directly reach a Black traveler audience. This audience definition allows media partners Initiative, Reprise and Matterkind to manage the digital media execution with added confidence that the brand’s messages are reaching a culturally and personally relevant audience. This also enables a partnership with Meta that will drive relevant, high-impact awareness of the platform across the company’s social media properties.

About Black & Abroad

Black & Abroad is a multi-platform travel & lifestyle company. Since 2015, our digital campaigns, international events and travel experiences have redefined exploration for the modern Black traveler. We pride ourselves on working together to connect people all over the world through culturally conscious & thought driven initiatives centered around exploration while providing crowd-sourced information hubs for urban travelers. Seeing a need to elevate the community through world exploration, our company was created to expose the world to nuanced, diverse narratives within the travel community. https://www.blackandabroad.com.

About Performance Art

Performance Art is a full-service agency network that brings together deep data, technology and customer-centric strategy with highly awarded leadership and creative talent. With a specialist approach focused on the individual, the agency leverages technology consulting and implementation, creative-data and CRM, systems design and customer experience strategy to help brands make the highest performing work, in the most creative way. Performance Art is an independent network in the Interpublic Group of Companies (NYSE: IPG). Learn more at and follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram (@Performance.art.agency). www.performanceart.com

New tech-driven digital campaign reframes the negative message into an inclusive call to action celebrating the continent’s diversity.

New York, NY, April 8, 2019– Black & Abroad, a multi-platform travel & lifestyle company dedicated to redefining world experiences for the modern Black traveler, hijacks the racialized and derogatory phrase “Go back to Africa” (#GoBackToAfrica) for a pan-African tourism campaign. By blacking out hate-fueled Twitter posts and reframing them against words and images showing the beauty and diversity of all African countries, the brand is putting a positive and uplifting spin on a negative and disparaging narrative.

“One of the campaign’s goals is to effectively strip the perceived power away from those who use the phrase ‘Go back to Africa’ with derogatory intent,” says Eric Martin, co-founder of Black & Abroad. “If we can strip the expression of its impact, then we can debunk the age-old narrative that Africa is a desolate, disease-ridden wasteland undeserving of our time and travels.”

The phrase “Go back to Africa” has a long, complicated history, and unfortunately, today, it is still widely used in racialized contexts online and beyond. According to NetBase’s social listening platform, the phrase is used over 4500 times a month online.

The Plan

Black & Abroad partnered with data-driven creative agency FCB/SIX to bring this campaign to life. Through a series of paid ads on Twitter, YouTube and digital OOH, Black & Abroad is capturing that hate as it happens, redacting the context, then turning it into a positive tourism message – brought to life through user generated photos harvested from social media using a powerful AI platform.

With messaging speaking to each of Africa’s 54 countries, every ad in the campaign builds equity behind the hashtag #GoBackToAfrica while driving to a new website at GoBacktoAfrica.com.

“We’re interested in showing a more diverse picture of Africa than you see in traditional tourism campaigns,” says Martin. “Yes, there are zebras in Africa, and zebras are great. But there are also amazing art galleries, and restaurants, and beaches, and other experiences, many of which may be more relevant to African American tourists than some other groups.”

GoBackToAfrica.com

To create the campaign, FCB/SIX partnered with IPG’s Initiative Media to help identify and reach African Americans who are interested in travel. It highlights each one of Africa’s 54 countries then invites them to “See themselves there” by clicking through to GoBackToAfrica.com. Designed as a counterpoint to the travel industry’s bias toward Caucasian travelers, the site features all African countries, and real social photos of African Americans traveling there.

“Do a quick Google image or stock image search of the word ‘travel’ and you’ll immediately see how biased the industry is toward caucasians,” says Ian Mackenzie, Executive Director of FCB/SIX. “GoBackToAfrica.com is a place where African American travelers can see themselves represented with positive images set in each one of Africa’s 54 countries.”

The Technology

At the heart of the project is an innovative digital platform designed to locate, quality control and gain permissions to use aspirational images of African Americans traveling in Africa. The platform, fueled by Google Vision and crafted by FCB/SIX, is an AI-powered content marketing engine purpose-built for the travel and tourism industry. The platform looks for images and ingests thousands of pieces of user generated visual content from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, then uses Google Vision’s image recognition technology to filter through content by location, subject, quality, and relevancy – all in real-time. Once curated and customized into campaign materials, the agency uses the platform to push the content out through Black & Abroad’s social channels and website.

The ultimate goal is for this campaign to break down barriers and encourage conversation among Black travelers around what it means to ‘Go back to Africa.’ Through targeted efforts to effectively showcase the essence of each African country, the campaign aims to spark a movement dedicated to eroding the negative perceptions of the continent with the high volume of content it creates purposefully designed to displace and bury hateful content that exists online. 

For more information visit: GoBackToAfrica.com