Advertising billboards in parts of London carry a different kind of messaging that promotes the virtues of empathy. With billboard space selling at an all-time low across the capital during the pandemic, Brotherhood Media, an ad agency, took the initiative and invited artists and musicians to submit designs that would help spread positivity. The Gorillaz, Pet Shop Boys and Chrissie Hyde are among the artists to have contributed so far.
In Shoreditch, Camden and Bethnal Green, the latest billboards are the band’s work Never Not Nothing and carry the words ‘Become Empathy Machines’. “The brief we gave was simply for positivity, it could be meaningful, abstract, amusing,” said Dominic Murphy from Brotherhood Media, which also designed its ads thanking the NHS. “The only rule was that it couldn’t be selling anything.” The agency has since committed to donating billboard sites that don’t sell in future to positive causes.
