NEW | Free 2025 Trends Webinar 🙌

2025-Webinar-Jan
21 January 2025

Trends x AI Ideation

Join us

In honor of Ramadan, meals don't appear on Tesco billboards until after sunset

To mark the month of Ramadan — when Muslims refrain from eating and drinking between dawn and dusk — British supermarket Tesco turned to dynamic billboards. During the day, screens show four hands and a large number of empty plates and platters. Once the sun sets, food appears on the plates, just as Muslims start breaking their fast with an iftar meal.

The ad was developed by BBH London with input from inclusion consultancy The Unmistakables and is running on billboards in areas with large Muslim communities, including London, Birmingham and Bradford. To accentuate the day-to-night transition, the billboards all face eastwards, with the sun setting in the background.

 

Trend Bite

Around one in four humans are Muslim, and Islam is forecast to become the world's largest religion by 2075. But in countries where Islam isn't the dominant religion, Muslims are hugely underrepresented in advertising and media.

What's more — in a country like the UK, the Muslim community is vastly varied, encompassing a wide range of cultural backgrounds. Tesco provides an elegant solution to the question of how to speak to such a diverse group. By leaving out images of specific people, the campaign can appeal to everyone who practices Islam.