Situation: The Unstereotype Alliance, convened by UN Women, contributes to the empowerment of people in all their diversity as well as addressing harmful stereotypes in the media. Currently, the portrayal of men in advertising is regressive and represents only traditional masculinity. This is leading to a rise in harmful ideologies (manfluencers) and a decline in men’s overall mental health.

Brief: In a print ad, redefine the entrenched views surrounding traditional masculinity in the media, and present a more diverse, contemporary understanding of meaningful connection for men.

Objectives: Capture the attention of men aged 18-27, and evolve depictions of traditional masculinity to inspire positive change and improve mental health for this demographic. Young men are increasingly valuing day-to-day happiness, belonging, and connection far more than the economic status they might’ve once favoured.

When men go to use a urinal, they always pick one that’s as far away from another man as possible. They keep their head straight, eyes focused ahead, and they turn away slightly. It’s isolating. It’s a depiction of the masculine experience. The creative idea, “Get closer.” takes this unspoken, everyday bathroom behaviour and flips it to illustrate the important role of redefining traditional masculinity in developing meaningful male friendships. With its attention-grabbing and etiquette-breaking headline, this execution, at first glance, asks men to come together in the most literal way. Upon further inspection, it’s revealed in the body copy that we’re asking men to come together to redefine what it means to be a man.

Our insight is the startling statistic that more than 1 in 4 men under the age of 30 have no close social connections. When you look at the impact of this, it means stereotypical masculinity leads to worsened mental health and levels of compassion amongst our target market. Since our target audience is young men aged 18-27 who spend a lot of their time interacting with others online, leading to further isolation, we knew it was important to position the Unstereotype Alliance as a platform for bringing men together. Ultimately, our print ad answers the brief by connecting the insight of social isolation and its impacts with the creative idea of referencing urinal etiquette. This draws an eye-catching, and timeless, parallel between the two, bridging the gap for audiences who might not have otherwise noticed the impact masculinity has on their everyday life.

-Generative expand on bathroom background

-Generative fill to clean up background image

-Man on right is AI generated using Adobe FireFly