Proctor & Gamble

What a glance can say without words

There’s a look Black men in America know too well. The one in the elevator when someone clutches their bag a little tighter. The one in the restaurant when a host seems surprised you have a reservation. The one in your own neighborhood when a jogger crosses the street to avoid you. These moments are small. Fleeting. Easy to dismiss if you’ve never been on the receiving end. But they add up. They send a message: you don’t belong here.

P&G wanted to bring those moments into the open. Not with statistics or lectures. With stories. The kind that make you feel something. The kind that stick with you after the screen goes dark.

Working with my team at Saturday Morning, I led the creative development of ‘The Look.’ We built a narrative around everyday scenarios. A father and son at a pool. A man walking into a jewelry store. A young professional in a boardroom. In each scene, the camera lingers on the glances. The assumptions. The quiet othering that happens in a split second. No words needed. The looks say everything.

The film hit hard. Over 15 million views. Oprah shared it. The New York Times, Adweek, and CNN covered it. It won a Silver Lion at Cannes. But the real impact was the conversations it started. People talking honestly about bias. About perception. About the small moments that shape how we see each other. That was the point all along.