In 2022, one million French mentally disabled citizens are still largely ignored by society.

The Anne de Gaulle Foundation wanted to turn the spotlight on this societal issue.

We renamed the Charles de Gaulle Airport, the biggest in Europe.

With a zero media budget and a simple change in name, we sparked a massive direct response from the media and ignited a national conversation on mental disability.

More importantly, we directly reached our main target, the person most capable of making public transport more inclusive: the French minister of transportation.

Charles and Yvonne de Gaulle created the Foundation Anne de Gaulle in 1945 in honor of their daughter Anne, born with Down syndrome. For 75 years, the foundation has been campaigning to make society more inclusive for the mentally disabled. But still to this day, they remain mostly invisible and excluded from much of society, including public transport. Our challenge was to focus attention on the foundation’s cause and prompt a direct response from the one person capable of making public infrastructure more inclusive: the French minister of transportation.

To get a direct response from our main target, we changed the name of the largest public infrastructure in France, an infrastructure with direct lineage to our foundation’s history: Charles de Gaulle Airport.

We changed the façade of the terminal: “Anne De Gaulle” was written in gigantic letters. Luggage tags, carts, queue signage, boarding passes, every screen in every terminal – even road signs – featured the name “Anne de Gaulle”.

This simple change of name generated a direct response from the media, which sparked a national conversation; but it also hit our main target, the French minister of transportation, who attended the launch of the renaming operation in person.

We wanted to focus attention on the issue of inclusion for the mentally disabled. We identified an obvious, yet never exploited insight: the foundation bears one of the most famous names in French history. A name so visible that it’s a gigantic media placement opportunity. A simple tweak could yield unprecedented visibility. We chose to apply this insight where it would be most visible and increase the odds of attaining a direct response from our targets. We chose Charles-de-Gaulle Airport, the biggest in Europe.

Our key message was an appeal for a more inclusive society, specifically for public infrastructure. We wanted a direct response from the one person capable of acting on this matter: Clément Baune, the French minister of transportation. We also targeted French society as a whole and wanted a direct response from the media in order to spark a national conversation.

We crafted an extensive indoor and outdoor rebranding to provide an unprecedented and engaging visual immersion in an entirely revamped airport: each DOOH, each flight information display board, each Airport TV screen, each baggage reclaim area display screen – even the road signs around the airport – all featured the name “Paris-Anne de Gaulle”. It lasted from December 3rd to December 11th.

The scale of the execution made it impossible to ignore for the French minister of transportation and for the French media.

The campaign had tremendous PR and social media repercussions. More than 200 articles were published in 13 different countries, with over €1 million in earned media and reach of 50 million. A large number of political and institutional figures, social entrepreneurs and artists known for taking a stand on disability rights shared the operation on social media. And we obtained a direct response from the one person capable of changing things: the French minister of transportation, that attended the reveal of the campaign.Our strategy and activation enabled the Foundation to reassert its refusal to accept things as they are. In addition, it endorsed the call from other charity organizations for a paradigm shift in the support available for people with disabilities. Groupe ADP, which operates Paris-Charles de Gaulles Airport, used the operation to kick-start its transformation aimed at improving accessibility for people with disabilities ready in time for the Paris

Charles de Gaulle is the French equivalent of Winston Churchill. He is the hero of WW2, founding father of the constitution and the first President of the 5th Republic. His influence and heritage are still tangible today, with many in France claiming to be Gaullist.

As such, everybody in France knows de Gaulle. According to polls, he is even regarded as the greatest Frenchmen of all time. So, this campaign could only be impactful in the French cultural context: we leveraged a cultural icon and a pillar of contemporary French identity to convey an impactful message of inclusivity.