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

For the Anne de Gaulle Foundation, this is unacceptable.

We built a large-scale, immersive brand experience by redesigning the Charles de Gaulle Airport, the biggest in Europe.

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

We turned Europe’s biggest airport into a large-scale immersive brand experience encouraging social inclusion.

Charles and Yvonne de Gaulle created the Fondation 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. For the Anne de Gaulle Foundation, this was unacceptable. Our objective was to build an unignorable, immersive brand experience conveying how the mentally disabled are socially excluded.

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.

To build this immersive brand experience, 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 up in gigantic letters. The whole traveler experience was revamped: luggage tags, carts, queue signage, boarding passes, every screen in every terminal – even road signage – featured the name Anne De Gaulle.

With a simple change in name and a large-scale rebranding operation, we sparked a national conversation in the media, we immersed travelers in a brand experience that communicated the foundation’s vision, and made mental disability impossible to ignore.

Inclusion for the mentally disabled lacks awareness in France. It is rarely discussed, accessibility to public infrastructure is difficult – and is a cruel symptom of exclusion. To change this, we had to identify a lever that could make inclusion of mental disability impossible to ignore, and accessibility a reality. We chose to target a public infrastructure that bears our brand’s name, that just so happens to be the largest public infrastructure in France: an irresistible opportunity to build an immersive brand experience.

We crafted an extensive indoor and outdoor rebranding for an unprecedented and engaging visual immersion for passengers: DOOH, flight information display board, Airport TV screen, baggage reclaim display screen, as well as road signs around the airport, featured the name “Paris-Anne de Gaulle”. A large-scale operation aimed at raising awareness of the experiences and needs of the disabled and of the importance for everyone to support human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The key feature of the operation was the name “Paris-Anne de Gaulle” mounted in gigantic lettering on the façade of each terminal. This striking – and surprising – image encapsulated our high-impact approach.

For a full week, passengers arriving from French-speaking countries were greeted upon landing with an announcement by flight attendants: “Welcome to Paris-Anne de Gaulle Airport”. Popular radio news station France Info partnered the event, broadcasting special programs and rolling reports nationwide. French dailies amplified the operation.

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.

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 Olympic Games in 2024.

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.