To activate its Australian Open Tennis sponsorship, ANZ Bank has put some of the biggest names in the game at the front of its advertising, including Novak Djokovic who was the face of ANZ tennis for the previous three years.

Then, in a move described by Australian sports broadcaster Gerard Whateley as “a bluechip moment”, ANZ replaced Djokovic with the little known Dylan Alcott - a wheelchair tennis player.

But it was the inclusive way ANZ chose to activate its partnership with Dylan that truly changed the game for the 1 in 5 Australians with a disability.

ANZ’s sponsorship of the Australian Open sees the brand dominate financial services share of mind at the start of each year.

While its tennis sponsorship is used as a platform to promote a variety of product messages from year to year, fundamentally, the key objectives for activating the sponsorship campaign are:

- To drive positive corporate reputation,

- And improve brand consideration metrics for the bank.

It’s no secret that banks in Australia have been under scrutiny for their questionable behaviours. Throughout 2018, the big four banks in Australia were put under the microscope by a Royal Commission (governmental inquiry) into Misconduct in the Banking and Financial Services Industry. Not surprisingly, all of the big banks have seen significant declines in their corporate reputation metrics.

As a brand known for its diversity work, we had evidence for the reputation building power of activations rooted in social purpose. Given our campaign objectives, bringing some of ANZ’s inclusion to tennis just made sense.

Despite being a 7X Grand Slam winner and dual-sport Paralympic Gold Medallist, only 6% of Australians knew Dylan. His incredible achievements deserved greater recognition. So we decided to put him on an equal pedestal to the one we’d put Djokovic on - fronting the ANZ brand.

Where convention in diversity communications suggested we should tell the heart-tugging story of Dylan’s superhuman successes in the face of his challenging disability, we decided to disrupt the status quo.

Instead, our idea was to hero Dylan not for his disability, but irrespective of it.

So, we portrayed Dylan simply as Dylan, a cheeky, charismatic guy and champion tennis player - who just happened to be

In Australia, 1 in 5 people have some form of disability. But representation of disabled individuals in the media is nowhere near as prevalent. In Dylan’s own words, he never saw anyone like himself on the television when he was growing up.

In the sporting world, airtime given to multi-class sports is on the rise and recognition for disabled athletes is undoubtedly increasing, thanks to the likes of Channel 4’s Superhumans. But disabled sports and para-athlete achievements are still largely in the shadow of their more celebrated able-bodied colleagues.

ANZ’s organisational purpose is ‘to help individuals and communities to thrive’. If the 1 in 5 Australians with a disability are to thrive, then seeing diverse individuals like themselves, not just being represented in the media, but being recognised and treated as equals, is critical.

As a wise person once said, “you cannot be what you cannot see”.

We made Dylan’s first TVC to launch ANZ Fit Bit Pay (running alongside two other non-Dylan ANZ tennis ads). Then, we ramped up Dylan’s involvement and created an entire integrated Savings campaign with seven individual executions running across TV, cinema, digital and social, plastering Dylan across outdoor billboards everywhere.

Our advertising saw Dylan portrayed in ways no other disabled athlete or individual has been before. From winning big, to being chased by a tiger, to flying through the air in a superhero cape, we treated Dylan as we would any able-bodied talent.

Arguably, we treated him even better. Partnering with Nike, ANZ presented Dylan with his own

Alcott branded Australian Open shoes,making him the first ever wheelchair athlete in the world to get his own Nike Player Exclusive shoes.

In January, The New York Times dubbed Dylan, “The most famous man at the Australian Open”. Where a year earlier, awareness of Dylan was only 6%, 1 in 4 now knew him.

And while ANZ can’t claim to be the sole driver of Dylan’s profile, Dylan heaps praise on the bank at every opportunity, describing the way ANZ activated its sponsorship as “life changing” for himself and the 1 in 5 Australians with a disability.

And the benefits went both ways.

Reaching over 162m people through paid and owned media, IPSOS identified a +46% improvement in campaign recognition when compared to ANZ’s work with Djokovic.

In turn, for the millions of Australians effectively reached, ANZ saw significantly higher Brand Consideration and Corporate Reputation scores (+45% and +250% respectively).

Furthermore, Analytic Partners econometrics modelling suggested a return on investment of 614% - the highest ROI for ANZ tennis ever.