Situation: Pink October is usually marked by a flood of breast cancer awareness campaigns. Most of these go unnoticed and unimpactful, especially for those who are hearing and speech impaired.

Brief: Emirates NBD, being Dubai’s largest banking institution, has always used its CSR initiatives to empower the community at a macro and micro level. So, when breast cancer awareness month was around the corner, the bank was clear in its stand of creating a campaign that spoke to everyone.

Objectives: The ‘TogetherLimitless’ program was at the forefront of the bank’s commitment to creating an inclusive campaign that broke the barriers of disability. We decided to make this the most exclusive campaign ever, speaking in a language that specifically reached 4.7 million women.

We created the world’s first signs for ‘cancerous’ and ‘lumps’, that didn’t otherwise exist in sign language. We then launched ‘Life Saving Signs’, a breast cancer awareness campaign that helped the hearing and speech impaired women to self-check. Completely executed in sign language, it was the first-ever silent campaign released on sound-first apps like TikTok and Instagram. Our campaign was heard loud and clear across media outlets and social media as key influencers with significant female followings took to their channels to praise and further spread the campaign’s reach.

In the region, 4.7 million women are hearing or speech impaired. Yet there are no breast cancer awareness campaigns targeting them. We partnered with sign language experts to analyze 300 universally used sign languages, each covering 140,000 words, and found that signs for ‘cancerous’ and ‘lumps’ didn’t exist. In a region where discussing breast cancer is already taboo, the lack of signs made the topic almost impossible to discuss for impaired women. Emirates NBD, the largest banking institution in the middle east, prides itself on inclusivity and through its ‘TogetherLimitless’ program is committed to building a disability inclusive society. So, when Pink October arrived, while most corporates launched numerous campaigns that excluded this community, Emirates NBD launched one that talked to those who couldn’t. By creating the first-ever life saving signs that didn’t otherwise exist in sign language.

It was the first-ever silent campaign that was released across sound-first apps – completely breaking the format and catching everyone’s attention.

The ‘Life Saving Signs’ campaign was launched organically on Emirates NBD’s Instagram and

TikTok accounts at the beginning of Breast Cancer Awareness month – 1st October 2023. It went viral overnight with the most popular influencers reposting it on their channels, and national media outlets covering the campaign within just 24 hours of its release.

With a budget of only US$ 45,000, the campaign gained over 7.3 million social media impressions, a 100% increase in positive brand association and most importantly a huge jump of 47% in mammogram checks with the community.

Our campaign succeeded in highlighting Emirates NBD’s commitment to building an inclusive community through its ‘TogetherLimitless’ program.

Impressions: +7.3m

Positive brand sentiment: +100%

Increase in mammogram check-ups within the community: +47%