This work is relevant to Use of Broadcast as broadcast was employed as the primary medium for the campaign. Uniting 13 of Australia’s biggest and most loved brands in a coordinated broadcast moment in time.

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.

In Australia, As with the rest of the world, people with visible and non-visible disability are severely under-represented in mainstream culture, leading them to feel ‘other’. Traditionally, when they have been represented in campaigns it was typically either 1. In a Road Accident commercial, portrayed as a deterrent to show people how their life would end up if they had an accident, or 2. As token inclusion, as a background extra. But the truth is, people with disability live normal lives. They buy shampoo, they get insurance, they bank, they buy underwear, they order food to their home etc. But, we never get to see them doing normal things on our screens and advertising communications.

This response centres around disability representation and inclusion - and important to note, while our campaign shows people with disability in front of the camera, we also had people with disability behind the camera, as part of our crew. Even our case study video was edited - and narrated - by people with disability.

About the Dylan Alcott Foundation -

The Dylan Alcott Foundation is led by Australian of the Year, Paralympian and ‘Golden Slam’ winning wheelchair tennis champion, Dylan Alcott AO. It is committed to helping Australians living with disability overcome the barriers in their daily lives, including barriers in representation, inclusion and recognition.

In Australia, Dylan is highly regarded and respected for his activism, advocating for inclusion and representation of people with disability.

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.

By consulting with people with disability (PWD), we began to understand the impact of able-ism in our industry: PWD spend money with brands, but are rarely shown in advertising - making them feel unseen. This was validated by Kantar research, which showed PWD appear in only 1% of ads, globally.

Advertisers drive culture, conversations, how people are seen. We capitalised on this in three key ways:

Raising awareness around disability representation amongst Australians, sparking nationwide conversation via an attention-grabbing national roadblock, and PR

Targeting brands and marketing professionals to:

Increase visibility in advertising. This included the mammoth task of recruiting 13 major brands to lead-by-example: inviting brand CMOs to a round-table, educating them on the issue, while also showing how they could create change. Most signed-up on the spot (inspired by peer-enthusiasm).

Build a movement that supports long-term change, with open-source, online tools for brands, regardless of membership status.

The Shift 20 Initiative was launched nationwide with the ‘Unignorable Ad Break’: a 13-spot road-block, with ads from some of Australia’s biggest brands, all re-shot to feature people with disability (PWD). Aired during ‘The Project’, a prime-time panel show, the roadblock was introduced by Dylan Alcott, who led a panel discussion highlighting the need, importance and impact of normalising seeing PWD on screen in Australia.

Over the following days, the initiative was 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 re-shot ads have continued to run, 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:

600M impressions. Estimated combined reach of 96% amongst Australians 18+

144 pieces of media coverage in AU, 467 pieces of coverage in the US. Opportunity to see: 434.9M

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

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

63% of viewers felt more positive about a brand after seeing advertising featuring people with disability (PWD), and 27% said they’d take some kind of action

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

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