A powerful new ad is using The National Football League’s beloved kiss cam to make a moving and emotionally evocative statement about the many different kinds of love.
The NFL partnered with creative agency R/GA and The Ad Council to produce the clip as part of its “Love Has No Labels” series. Throughout the course of the ad, which was filmed at the Pro Bowl, the kiss cam pans to a number of different groups of people who either kiss or embrace, including same-sex couples, a mixed-race couple, an older couple and diverse groups of friends. One woman is even wearing a shirt that says “Orlando Survivor,” a nod to the Pulse Nightclub Massacre that took the lives of 49 queer people of color and their allies in June 2016.
“We noticed that [the iconic kiss cam] was often focused on traditional notions of love,” Chris Northam, an executive creative director at R/GA, stated in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “We thought, what if we could showcase a more modern take? We hope it does cause conversation and, more than anything else, that the fans embrace this message and help spread this movement.”
First launched in 2015, the “Love Has No Labels” campaign aims to fight bias against diverse communities by creating high-visibility through advertising.
The NFL has increasingly made efforts to become more embracing of the LGBTQ community over the last few years, having met with gay rights groups in 2013 in an effort to end homophobia in sports.
Just this week NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy sounded off on proposed anti-LGBTQ legislation in Texas saying in an email, “If a proposal that is discriminatory or inconsistent with our values were to become law there, that would certainly be a factor considered when thinking about awarding future events.”