Despite almost 20% of Australians having a visible or non-visible disability, only 1% are represented by brands in their advertising and marketing communications, leaving a large portion of the Australian population feeling unseen and unacknowledged.

Partnering with the Dylan Alcott Foundation, we were tasked with not only raising awareness around the current lack of visibility of people with disability in mainstream media, but also inspiring long term change.

Our campaign objectives were to -

1. Raise awareness around the lack of visibility of people with disability in advertising.

2. Incite brands to commit to increasing disability representation and inclusion.

3. Begin the shift towards normalising disability in our everyday lives by increasing representation in communications to truly reflect the Australian population.

4. Ensure long lasting change by creating a centralised body and resources to help brands increase representation and inclusion. With the ultimate goal of reaching true representation by 2028.

To help increase representation and inclusion of people with disability, we created The Shift 20 Initiative - a collective movement centralised around an open source utility, a hub with tools and resources to help brands be more inclusive and make the shift towards normalising disability representation across all forms of media.

To launch the initiative, we united 13 of Australia’s biggest brands in a world-first coordinated effort to create ‘The Unignorable Ad Break’ - reshooting key scenes in their most iconic ads, replacing existing talent with people with different forms of disability to show how true representation should look in our everyday culture.

The ads formed a nation-first media roadblock, creating mass inclusion on a scale never before seen in Australian Advertising.

We also ensured disability inclusion and representation extended beyond the on-screen cast to include crew, VO talent and editors with disability - Yes, even in the case study.

Our PR strategy was twofold;

Speak to Australians, raising awareness of the issue through mainstream news and lifestyle titles.

Spark conversation in the Business and Corporate world, encouraging more brands to join the initiative.

Launch: Dylan Alcott co-hosted ‘The Project’ on Channel 10 with the ‘Unignorable Adbreak’. The Project opened with Dylan announcing the initiative and outlining the importance of better representation, with the ads playing back-to-back in the first ad break.

Consumer: Strategic media interviews for Dylan and the talent that featured within the newly shot ads. Our strategy focused on helping those with disability share their experiences of the effects of the lack of disability representation, in their own words.

Business: Launched through an ‘exclusive’ with The Australian’s Growth Agenda, a trade release, plus an interview series with CMOs across several months in Ad News and mi3, speaking directly to marketers responsible for making change within their organisations.

The Shift 20 Initiative was launched nationwide on the 18th Sept 2023 with the ‘Unignorable Ad Break’ media road-block airing during prime-time and leading into a panel discussion on ‘The Project’ where Dylan Alcott highlighted the need, importance and impact the initiative will have in normalising the lives of people with disability in Australia. Over the following days, the initiative was further promoted on national Morning Shows, News broadcast, Radio shows, podcasts, and print publications, creating a wall of conversation in support of Shift 20.

Post the ‘Unignorable Ad Break’ launch moment, the reshot ads continued to run over the following months and will continue to do so, showing the commitment of the founding brands to disability representation.

Supported by nationwide TV, OOH, Press and Radio spots, the launch of the campaign was one of the largest co-ordinated advertising, media and PR efforts ever undertaken in Australia.

The campaign achieved blanket coverage across the national and global media landscape, receiving strong coverage across broadcast, print and online news titles.

Results:

- 434.9M potential reach

- 144 pieces of coverage in AU and 467 pieces of coverage in the US (total 611 pieces)

- 78% uplift in recall of disability representation in participating brands advertising in the first 3 weeks.

- 10% increase in overall recall of disability representation in advertising in the first 3 weeks.

Post launch, over 200 brands, organisations and agencies reached out to see how they could get involved in the initiative - a number which continues to climb.

However the true marker of success was the response from the disability community, with personal stories shared expressing gratitude for the campaign's role in raising awareness and fostering positive lasting change.