Despite almost 20% of Australians having a visible or non-visible disability, only 1% are represented by brands in their advertising and marketing communications, leaving a large portion of the Australian population feeling unseen and unacknowledged.

But it’s not only representation that is lacking, it’s also accessibility. This is especially true when it comes to the blind and vision impaired, who are often forgotten about by brands when executing their communications - in particular Outdoor media, which is traditionally a visual medium.

So, as part of launching The Shift 20 Initiative (A centralised body with resources, leadership and guidance to help brands become more inclusive of people with disability) our objective was to ensure partnering brands were making their OOH as inclusive and accessible to blind and vision impaired members of the community as possible.

Consulting with people with disability (PWD) highlighted the impact of able-ism in our industry: PWD spend money with brands, but aren’t shown in advertising - making them feel unseen. Kantar research validated this, showing PWD appear in only 1% of ads.

To increase representation, we created Shift 20 - a collective movement centralised around an open source utility, a hub with resources to help brands be more inclusive, shifting towards normalising disability representation.

At launch, we united 13 of Australia’s biggest brands in a world-first coordinated effort to create ‘The Unignorable AdBreak’ reshooting key scenes in their most iconic ads, replacing existing talent, with PWD to show true representation.

The ads formed a nation-first media roadblock taking over a complete ad-break, leading into a hero PR moment on Channel 10’s The ‘Project’. We also partnered with JCDecaux, creating a Braille OOH unit, ensuring accessibility for the blind and vision impaired.

The target audience for Braille Boards was three fold:

1. The blind and vision impaired - Making them feel recognised and normalised within society.

2. Brands and organisations - Highlighting the current lack of representation and accessibility of people with disability across the board in Australian brand advertising and communication and the importance of being inclusive.

3. The wider Australian population - Raising awareness around the current under-representation of people with disability in our daily lives and promoting the brands that a committing to change.

The media planning for the Braille Boards Outdoor saw them specifically placed in accessible, ground level and clear-space areas to ensure they could be safely accessed by the vision impaired audience.

The Braille Boards are printed on a high-quality composite panel, which can withstand all types of weather conditions and resist warping in the sun. The braille is created using Relief Printing, a process that applies hundreds of layers of ink, adding small percentages at a time, gradually building up the raised braille dots, which is applied on top of the existing creative.

The Outdoor campaign included creative executions for both the Shift 20 Initiative and AAMI and ran across Melbourne & Sydney throughout Sept and October 2023, coinciding with the Shift 20 Initiative launch activity - supporting a rasp of other national media including TV, OLV, Radio, Online and Social.

The campaign achieved blanket coverage across the national and global media landscape:

The campaign achieved estimated combined reach of 96% amongst Australians 18+

78% uplift in recall of disability representation in participating brand’s advertising in the first 3-weeks.

10% increase in overall recall of disability representation in advertising in the first 3-weeks.

63% of viewers felt more positive about a brand after seeing advertising featuring people with disability (PWD), and 27% said they’d take some kind of action.

Post launch, 200+ brands, organisations and agencies reached out to see how they could get involved - a number which continues to climb.

However the true marker of success was the response from the community of PWD, with personal stories shared expressing gratitude for the campaign's role in raising awareness and fostering positive lasting change.