‘Retard’ appears on Twitter every 5 seconds. Yet the word is offensive, not just to people with disability, but to their friends and families.

To raise awareness about the impact the R word has, we created a Twitter bot to detect any English language use of it. The bot then instantly replies with a video message from someone affected by the word, talking directly to the person who just used it.

Recipients were directed to our website to learn about the effect the word has, as well as getting to know the people behind each video. A real-time counter showed how often the R word was being used on Twitter (over the last 7-days), and visitors could show their support by sharing our awareness video to Facebook and Twitter.

The campaign was launched by the Western Australian minister for Disability and ran 14 Feb - 19 Mar 2018. Campaign elements included our Twitter bot, social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook, You Tube), and a bespoke website.

To minimise the risk of our Twitter bot being shut down, we had to limit our bot’s daily response rate to under the Twitter cap of 2400 tweets per day. We did this by creating an algorithm which allowed us to target between every 1-in-10 to 1-in-50 offensive tweets (depending on the useage that day).

Back-up bot accounts were created, and utilised, to replace any that were shut down and unable to be reinstated. This ensured the campaign stayed live and active, with minimal disruption.

Given that the word affects so many different types of people, we created a suite of twelve video messages that the bot could randomly select to send.

• 62% of recipients watched their video message, many responded with a comment indicating behavioural change, including;

“I will never use that word again since I watch your video” - @Iceninjaice

“My apologies. The tweet has been deleted. I sincerely apologise for allowing my emotions to get the better of me. @siya_bele01

“Ok, now I feel bad. I’m sorry” - @rnharer

• $200,000+ of earned media on day one, with national TV, radio and online coverage.

• Global engagement reach across 30 countries

• 10,363 direct video messages viewed in week one.

• 42% increase in Google searches for our client, “Avivo”, since the campaign went live.

• 58% increase in traffic to Avivo’s webpage (from pre-launch to post-launch)

• R Word posts on Avivo’s Facebook page received 300%+ higher engagement rates than non-R Word posts.

• Thousands of offensive conversations stopped after the Twitter bot commented on the thread.