‘Retard’ appears on Twitter every 5 seconds. Yet the word is offensive, not just to people with disability, but to their friends and families.

To raise awareness about the impact the R word has, we created a Twitter bot to detect any English language use of it. The bot then instantly replies with a video message from someone affected by the word, talking directly to the person who just used it.

Recipients were directed to our website to learn about the effect the word has, as well as getting to know the people behind each video. A real-time counter showed how often the R word was being used on Twitter (over the last 7-days), and visitors could show their support by sharing our awareness video to Facebook and Twitter.

There are a number of existing campaigns dedicated to stopping the use of the R word, but they typically attract existing supporters and advocates of the cause.

This campaign is unique in that it directly targets the very people using the word, in real time, through the data we captured on Twitter.

Our creative output was enhanced by data because we knew unequivocally that we were talking to the very people we needed to – users of the R word.

Because of this, and coupled with the faceless nature of social media, our creative response to these users was to respond to their offensive posts with a video from someone who is personally affected by the R word.

Given that the word affects so many different types of people, we created a suite of twelve video messages that the bot could randomly select to send.

This personalised approach saw 62% of recipients watch the video they had been sent – a staggering success rate on any social platform.

We also integrated the data we captured (uses of the words Retard and Retarded) on our website by showing visitors the real-time, live numbers of people using the R word in the past 7 days.

• 62% of recipients watched their video message – many responded with a comment indicating behavioural change, including;

“I will never use that word again since I watch your video” - @Iceninjaice

“My apologies. The tweet has been deleted. I sincerely apologise for allowing my emotions to get the better of me. @siya_bele01

“Ok, now I feel bad. I’m sorry” - @rnharer

• $200,000+ of earned media on day one, with national TV, radio and online coverage.

• Global engagement reach across 30 countries

• 10,363 direct video messages viewed in week one.

• 42% increase in Google searches for our client, “Avivo”, since the campaign went live.

• 58% increase in traffic to Avivo’s webpage (from pre-launch to post-launch)

• R Word posts on Avivo’s Facebook page received 300%+ higher engagement rates than non-R Word posts.

• Thousands of offensive conversations stopped after the Twitter bot commented on the thread.

This campaign is built around two very specific pieces of data – tweets containing the words ‘Retard’ and ‘Retarded’. These words pop up every 5 seconds on Twitter.

To raise awareness about the impact the R word has, we created a Twitter bot, and using Twitter’s API, it detected any English language use of these words. It then replied in real-time with a video message from someone affected by the word, talking directly to the person who just used it.

The data IS the catalyst for this idea, and enabled real-time engagement with our exact target audience.

Twitter has a global community of over 330m users. And a quick search for mentions of the word ‘Retard’ revealed an alarming statistic – the word was being used every 5 seconds (far higher than usage on Facebook and Instagram).

Using Twitter’s API, we created a Twitter bot that looked at every new Tweet appearing on the platform and any use of the word ‘Retard’ or ‘Retarded’ within each tweet.

The bot only looked at English language accounts, as the word ‘retard’ is commonly, and correctly, used across French language accounts.

Once the word was detected, the bot responded instantly with a video message from someone affected by the R word, talking directly to the person who just used it.

To minimise the chances of the bot being shut down, we limited our response rate to under the 2400 tweets per day cap by creating an algorithm that allowed us to target between 1-in-10 to 1-in-50 tweets, depending on the useage rate on the day.

Multiple bot accounts were also created to combat Twitter blocking our account for sending repeated tweets (ten different tweet messages were created to further hinder being blocked).

Our client is a leading not-for-profit community organisation, supporting people with disabilities to live life in their own homes and communities.

A big part of this is to help them feel included in the community, and to be treated with dignity and respect. How the community treats them, and refers to them, is incredibly important.

Our brief was to promote inclusiveness and respect for people with disabilities in the community. Brand awareness wasn’t mandatory – social awareness was.

Due to the budget restraints and the size of the target audience (the general community) we looked to social media to raise awareness. This lead us to an alarming statistic;

The word Retard appears on Twitter every 5 seconds.

Our aim was to raise awareness among the global community that the word has an impact, and to ultimately reconsider using it.