As in most countries, France suffers from social inequality and discrimination. But in a country with the motto “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité”, it is regrettable to note that the situation is getting worse each year. It is the Observatory’s role to quantify and qualify these issues by raising public awareness and educating people in ways to fight the problem.

Each year, the Observatory gathers national data on social inequalities. Their reports are usually published in the form of books, however, this format isn't particularly impactful in terms of communication and often targets an already informed audience. Therefore, to gain recognition differently, the Observatory strives to use other complementary communication tools that are more entertaining and impactful. This was recently the case with the "Monopoly of Inequalities," which educated thousands of children in schools. So today, the "Hear the Inequalities" campaign was born to raise awareness, but this time exclusively through audio.

When it comes to ideas based on data, we often talk about data visualization. The Observatoire des Inégalités employs data visualization techniques every day, constantly seeking new ways to innovate in this regard (such as with the Monopoly of Inequalities). But this time, it was about testing data transmission in a new format: 100% audio. How could they raise awareness among the French public about social inequalities using radio? This is how the idea "Hear the Inequalities" was born. Scripts where 10 actors, all representing the diversity of the French population, tell the same story at the same time. However, as the narrative develops and inequalities are mentioned, voices fade away until only one is left. A simple idea, but one that is very impactful. For the first time, the public could actually hear the inequalities.

The data is collected by the Observatoire des Inégalités and transcribed into an annual report. From this report, we picked out the statistics that corresponded most to social conversations in France (holidays, health and careers). The subsequent task was to transform this data into radio-only scripts through three stories aimed at raising the general public’s awareness as much as possible.

The campaign was broadcasted on 7 French national radio stations (BFM, RMC, NRJ, Europe 1, Europe 2, and RFM) during the first week of April and was also extensively promoted on social media and through press articles.

The campaign received an extremely positive response from the general public and was even shared in several articles by national daily newspapers (even if it was “only” a radio campaign!).

Additionally, the traffic to the Observatoire des Inégalités website saw a peak of more than 500% during the campaign period, which was ideal during a peak time for donation appeals.