The Shift 20 Initiative needed to resonate with the Australian public to inspire real behaviour change and brand action, with PR a driving force in prompting conversation around the issue. All launch activity was strategically devised to raise awareness of the nationwide issue, generating significant earned media coverage through a variety of media verticals. This strategic approach ensured earned media coverage through APAC-wide Advertising and Marketing trade publications, and consumer titles spanning national broadcast, print, online and social.

Despite almost 20% of Australians having a visible or non-visible disability, only 1% are represented by brands through 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 consisted of four robust goals;

- Raise awareness around the lack of visibility of people with disability in the Australian advertising industry.

- Incite brands to commit to increasing disability representation and inclusion within their own communications.

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

- Ensure long lasting change by creating centralised resources which help brands increase representation and inclusion.

In Australia, As with the rest of the world, people with visible and non-visible disability are severely under-represented in our mainstream culture, leading them to feel ‘other’.

With 1 in 5 consumers having some form of visible or non-visible disability, brands aren’t yet representing the whole of their customer base or being truly reflective of the Australian community in advertising.

Traditionally in the past, people with disabilities have been represented on screen either

In a Road Accident commercial where they are portrayed as a deterrent, to not end up like this after an accident

As a token inclusion as a background extra.

But the truth is, people with a 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.

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 in advocating for inclusion and representation of people with disability.

To 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 of disability across film, print, OOH, digital and design.

To deliver big impact, we needed to lead by example uniting 13 of Australia’s’ biggest brands in a world-first coordinated effort to create ‘The Unignorable Ad Break’. Founding brands; ANZ, AAMI, Bonds, Kia, McDonalds, Oral-B, nib, Tourism Australia, Pantene, TikTok, Uber, Virgin Australia and Weet-Bix™ committed to reshooting key scenes in their most iconic ads, replacing existing talent, with people with disability to show how true representation should look.

The ads formed an Australian-first media roadblock, running back-to-back to take over a complete ad-break, followed by a hero PR moment on Channel 10’s ‘The Project’, where Dylan Alcott hosted and promoted the initiative.

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 propelled by significant earned media, our kick-off moment on The Sunday Project marking the start of a two-week PR blitz.

Supported by consumer research (in collaboration with TRA) examining the consumer sentiment towards disability representation in advertising, we were enabled to create additional news hooks around the scarcity and acceptability of representation pre-launch.

This research, and overarching Shift 20 Initiative story filtered through all national TV networks (Nine, 7 & 10 news and lifestyle shows), all leading national print titles (The Australian, SMH, Daily Telegraph, The Age and syndications), radio channels, online news outlets and trade publications, creating a wall of conversation in support of Shift 20.

Supported by nation-wide OOH, Press and Radio spots, the campaign was one of the largest co-ordinated advertising, media and PR efforts undertaken in Australia, with the reshot ads continuing to run.

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)

40+ spokesperson interviews

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.