By asking “Because who is perfect?” the non-profit organisation Pro Infirmis is drawing public attention to the fact that disabled people should be part of our society. The campaign was started to create awareness – not to generate donations.

To achieve this, the bodies of five disabled people were measured precisely to create polished and lacquered window display dummies.

On 3 December, the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, these deformed mannequins were placed in shop windows in Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse, one of the world’s most expensive and elegant shopping streets.

A four minute campaign video explained how the dummies were produced and delivered in the shop windows. The reactions of passers-by were as predicted: Vexed looks into the shop windows, followed by moments of intense reflection about the role of disabled people in our society.

At the beginning of the campaign, the film and the event itself were distributed in the shortest space of time and with great personal effort, eventually with the help of PR measures. These included media relations, social media, campaigning, opinion-leader relations and a local press conference. In addition, it was part of the strategy to generate international awareness through an English press release, to create additional relevance for the event in the national media.

The campaign was communicated solely through media relations and campaigning measures. On the day of the launch, there was a newsroom on location with the campaign’s main characters answering journalists’ questions.

Five disabled people were measured precisely to create polished and lacquered window display dummies. On the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, these deformed mannequins were placed in shop windows in Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse, one of the world’s most elegant shopping streets.

A documentation explained how the dummies were produced, and carried information about Pro Infirmis.

A Swiss event is becoming a global movement: In conjunction with the Bahnhofstrasse shops, which wanted the dummies to appear for longer than planned, there are a requests (e.g. from New York) to arrange the same event. The documentary has more than 15 million views on youtube, an earned media contact range of 140,355,539 and makes people think about the inclusion of disabled people worldwide.