Cannes Lions

Diversish

AMVBBDO, London / THE VALUABLE 500 / 2019

Presentation Image
Case Film
Film

Overview

Entries

Credits

Overview

Background

The Valuable 500 is a business to business disability inclusion initiative. It is not a charity. Its goal is to convince private sector influential companies to make disability their business priority: something very few of them want to do. And it’s not just about employment. Most multinational corporations don’t show people with disabilities in their advertising, don’t develop any products for disabled people, their shops and offices are largely inaccessible. The result: there’re more clothing lines for dogs than for disabled people, 75% of disabled people have left a shop or a business because of accessibility issues, only 0,06% of adverts show disabled people, only 2,6% of films have disabled characters, and the list goes on.

Idea

90% of companies claim to prioritise diversity but only 4% prioritise disability. We created a new word to describe such companies. DIVERSish. To illustrate the most common types of diversish behaviour, we created a campaign that exposed the toe-curling reality of selective inclusivity in business. Our message was simple: if disability is not on your agenda, neither is diversity.

Strategy

Diversity and inclusion programs are extremely popular within the business world. 90% of multinational corporations claim to prioritise diversity. But only 4% prioritise disability. Something that affects 1,5 billion people globally. Businesses all around the world tend to simply ignore disabled people and their needs, all while claiming to be passionate about diversity and inclusion. This campaign was aimed at high-profile executives of influential private sector companies. The goal was to convince them to end decades-long procrastination, make disability their business priority and put it on their board agendas.

Execution

The campaign was commissioned specifically to be launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The WEF officials loved it. But then banned the client from showing or mentioning it. In under 24h we had to come up with a plan B. We hyper-targeted the delegates with the film on social media, then retargeted them with messages from disability activists. And even when the delegates left Davos, we continued targeting them with additional reasons to sign up.

Outcome

In the last ten years of tireless campaigning the #Valuable has only managed to recruit one multinational to their cause. Within ten days of the ‘DIVERSish' launch, 51 private sector multinational companies have signed up to The Valuable500 and the list keeps growing. The likes of Microsoft, Virgin Media, Barclays, Boeing, Sainsburys, Fujitsu, Accenture, among them. Importantly ‘Diversish’ isn’t just an endline for our film. It is a greater idea for activists everywhere, an expression to confront the injustice of disability exclusion. Until now, the world’s most powerful business leaders have never been confronted in a way that left them no option but to rethink their diversity agendas. ‘DIVERSish’ has given a name to their decades-long procrastination. They can’t cancel their current Diversity & Inclusion initiatives. But they can’t continue ignoring disabled people either, not without being called out and labeled diversish.

Similar Campaigns

2 items

DIVERSish | Tremendous Addition

THE VALUABLE 500, Dublin

DIVERSish | Tremendous Addition

2019, THE VALUABLE 500

(opens in a new tab)