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 largely invisible and excluded, notably from transport. For the Foundation, this was unacceptable. The PR challenge was to assert its pioneering vision and leadership, raise awareness of its work, and build a transformative collective approach to support partners also campaigning to change perceptions of, while improving support for the disabled.

To build that immersive brand experience, we changed the name of the largest public infrastructure in France, an infrastructure with direct lineage to our foundation’s story: Charles de Gaulle Airport.

We changed the façade of the terminal: Anne De Gaulle was written in gigantic letters. The whole traveler experience was revamped: luggage tags, carts, queues, boarding passes, every screen in every terminal, even road signage were bearing Anne’s name.

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.

12 million people in France are officially declared as disabled. However, this issue gets minimum media coverage. Governments make grand statements but take very little action. So, we decided to leverage the momentum around International Day of Persons with Disabilities and the opening of Terminal 1 to raise visibility. This was the first-ever name change for a major international airport to defend a great cause and support a foundation. We created media buzz by spotlighting the Anne De Gaulle Foundation and ADP Group.

Step 1 –A shortlist of journalists and key national, local and international media (print, radio and TV)

Step 2 –A press release to the ten main journalists (under embargo), then to the entire list two days before

Step 3 –Videos and photos of the airport with its new name from Make It Live

Step 4 –A teaser broadcast on France Info radio two days before

We crafted an extensive indoor and outdoor rebranding to provide an unprecedented and engaging visual immersion in an entirely revamped airport: each DOOH, each flight information display board, each Airport TV screen, each baggage reclaim area display screen – even the road signs around the airport – all featured the name “Paris-Anne de Gaulle”. It lasted from December 3rd to December 11th.

The scale of the execution made it impossible to ignore for the French minister of transportation and for the French media.

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.