Titanium.

As part of Comcast’s commitment to accessible products and services, the company developed the industry’s first talking guide, a voice-guidance feature that gives customers with visual disabilities the freedom to independently explore thousands of TV shows and movies.

Given that one-third of American households have someone living with a disability, we knew this story was for a much larger audience. We wanted to help everyone understand what entertainment is like for a person with disabilities—just how rich and unique it is. So we asked Emily, a little girl who is blind, what she sees when she watches her favorite movie, The Wizard of Oz. Then we worked with Emily to bring her vision to life, creating a truly universal entertainment experience. “Emily’s Oz” debuted at the Oscars and was accompanied by robust documentary content and a rich web experience so everyone could experience her magical world.

“Emily’s Oz” was Comcast’s most buzzed-about campaign ever. Many of our key metrics on internal and external channels broke industry standards and shattered our own best records. We saw negative social sentiment for the brand reduced from 50% to 0%—a first for the brand. The spot was featured in 80+ stories across TV, Radio and Online, and it accumulated 11.9M video views—11x more views than any other Comcast spot has garnered. And over half a billion total impressions—254M earned. The spot also garnered more Retweets than any post in Comcast history. And we set new engagement records for brand campaigns (4.6%). The campaign was embraced universally, receiving personal praise from L. Frank Baum’s great-grandson. And it made a lot of employees proud. By understanding and respecting a community, we connected with them on a deeper level. And in doing so, we set a new bar for accessibility communications.

We knew that national and local placements within the Oscars would be the perfect stage for “Emily’s Oz” to make its debut. But to start we built buzz and momentum for the story prior to the Oscars. First, the story broke in national press. Then we began seeding the TV spot on owned social channels, amplifying those social posts with paid media. We supported the story across our owned assets, including banners and a sign-in-page takeover on our customer portal, and made all content available On Demand for subscribers. We took steps to ensure that the campaign was universally accessible. “Emily’s Oz” was the first video-described commercial. The website was 100% ADA compliant. We worked with Warner Brothers to get The Wizard of Oz video described for On Demand viewing. It wasn't just a campaign about accessibility but was also an accessible campaign.

Research uncovered two key insights that drove the strategy. The first was that people in the visually impaired/blind community (a community of over 8M people) watch just as much TV as everyone else. They love movies and TV shows but have to rely on other people to navigate their guides, On Demand and DVRs. Beta customers using the talking guide said that this feature is truly an equalizer. The second was that when it comes to portraying the disabled community in marketing, inclusion and the celebration of universal truths are important. This led to our strategy: entertainment is universal. Access should be as well. Comcast’s objective was to create awareness of the product but to make it meaningful to a broader audience, ultimately to create positive momentum around Comcast’s brand.