Media > Media: Sectors

THE DAY THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC COMMUNICATED IN SIGN LANGUAGE

TBWA\DOMINICANA, Santo Domingo / FUNDACIÓN MARÍA BATLLE / 2019

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Overview

Credits

OVERVIEW

Why is this work relevant for Media?

The deaf community was invisible to Dominican society. On International Deaf Day, we gave a voice to deaf people using their own language and above all uniting the deaf and hearing community with the message.

For a day we taught sign language through the main medias of the country turning it into our class room and making it impossible for the country not to see our message.

By increasing the visibility of the deaf in the media we achieved that they started to be considered in the educational and working system.

Background

More than 300,000 Dominicans are deaf, the lack of inclusion and knowledge of this community in society makes it even harder for them to be part of the educational and working system. RD EnSeña, the first and only sign language platform in the country teaches a sign per day on social media looking to raise awareness and create new opportunities for deaf people. It lacked the exposure and budget to generate a significant impact. Our main goal: increase the reach of RD EnSeña's platform to make the deaf population visible. as well as to start the conversation about the inclusion of the deaf community in our society.

Describe the creative idea/insights

We decide to make visible an invisible and ignored community. On september 28th, International Deaf Day, we gave a voice to deaf people using their own language and above all uniting the deaf and hearing community with the message.

For a day we taught sign language through the main medias of the country turning it into our class room.

By smart negotiations we achieve newspapers, billboard companies, influencers, tv programs, people and brands join our message and began to share our signs, this made society put its eyes on the deaf community and the opportunities it lacked.

Describe the strategy

The audience consists of men and women over 13 in the Dominican

Republic, who, for the most part, do not know sign language or if there are

platforms that educate people about that language. The target audience

is composed of people who do not know the existence of RD EnSeña.

Our approach consisted on impacting on an unnoticed date, in the most visible media, to expose the problems of the deaf community.

If we wanted to capture the attention of the country we had to do something that was impossible to ignore.

We had $0 budget, so by smart negotiations we achive the media media embrace the cause and the people to join our message.

Describe the execution

Dominican Republic woke up finding out that Diario Libre's logo, the most important newspaper in the country, was translated into sign language. Also our message appeared on the cover El Día, another importante newspaper. Many articles about the deaf community were published on it’s print and digital formats.

Even its most read section, the cartoons, was teaching sign language to its readers.

Throughout the day we made it impossible for the country not to see our message, the busiest streets and shopping centers of the city were flooded with sign language. We even got the biggest movie theatres to let us teach sign language before every show.

What started as an action was suddenly a movement: people started to share their videos communicating by sign language, other important influencers, TV programs and brands joined.

List the results

We managed to increase by 42% the audience that the platform had in their Instagram channel. People, non-paid brands and influencers joined the movement by uploading a video saying their name or any phrase in sign language.

We managed to get the Diario Libre newspaper to dedicate its editorial to us during that day.

2,500,000 of impacts on media.

Due to the social preassure, the Chamber of Deputies started a bill to achieve the inclusion of sign language in the educational system and also the creation of employment opportunities. Nonetheless, we achieved that the most important awards of the country were transmitted in sign language and that the vice president addressed the country in sign language for the first time. All of this with a budget of $0, and more than $200k in free exposure.

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