We made “sorry” a bad word, by showing that any off-colour, profanity-laden reaction is better than “Sorry”.

Anything But Sorry, an integrated digital campaign launched with a social video, “The S-Word”, features people with Down syndrome offering humorously inappropriate suggestions to welcome a baby with Down syndrome. The video debunks stereotypes of people with Down syndrome as struggling, unintelligent and a “burden”. At the same time, we launched docu-stories of Down syndrome families affected by the word “Sorry”.

We even targeted the top-30 YouTube videos containing the word sorry with the first-ever language warnings. Our ‘S Warnings’ featured our Down syndrome talent warning viewers of the ‘inappropriate’ language they were about to hear.

Everything drove to a microsite where people shared more colourful welcomes that were “Anything But Sorry”. Every share welcomed one of the 9,363 Down syndrome babies born in North America this year.

Anything But Sorry included two waves of earned media:

1. Phase 1: Canadian Down Syndrome Week

The S-Word video drove awareness on Facebook, launched during Canadian Down Syndrome Week, November 1 to 7, 2017. PR targeted news, health, and parenting media, earning wide-scale international coverage. Online articles about the S-Word were instant clickbait, driving organic sharing to amplify awareness.

2. Phase 2: World Down Syndrome Day

For World Down Syndrome Day, on March 21 2018, we refreshed the campaign by censoring the word Sorry, creating an opportunity for a second round of PR. Our “S Warnings” ran as pre-roll to intercept videos containing the word sorry.

The massive media coverage from phase one earned us donated TV media to run a second awareness video. PR targeted morning shows, landing two segments that gave our Down syndrome experts their biggest platform yet to explain why sorry is a bad word.

Anything But Sorry achieved:

Driving awareness:

- Earned 1.3 billion impressions from 106 pieces of international coverage including 4 TV segments and stories in Huffing Post, Today’s Parent and all of Canada’s major news outlets.

- 365,000 total video views on social media, with just $1,200 CAD spent on Facebook.

Driving engagement:

- 64,000 social shares including e-cards shares, video shares and news story shares.

- 350% increase in requests for educational support material.

Changing attitudes and behaviour:

- In quantitative research, 77.25% of respondents said that the video changed their perceptions of people with Down syndrome and 87% agreed they would not say “sorry” to parents of a Down syndrome baby. 2

- The campaign drove a 330% increase in donations to CDSS.

- The most incredible result was that the S-Word became an inspirational tool for a couple to announce their baby had Down syndrome.

2 Toluna Analytics