Last week, Special, The Glue Society and PHD achieved an advertising feat that would have made most in the industry say, “Can’t”. They coaxed 10 of Australia’s most well-known brands to swap out key scenes in the adverts they were running to include a person with disability. Then they created a media roadblock in prime-time current affairs TV show, Sunday Project, that launched their project, Shift 20 Initiative, that aims combat the lack of disability representation in Australian advertising for the Dylan Alcott Foundation. Australians with disability make up almost 20% of the population. Yet in its advertising, they are only represented 1% of the time. The ten brands were ANZ, AAMI, Bonds, Kia, McDonalds, Oral-B, nib, Pantene, Uber, and Weet-Bix.
Special creative directors, Peter Cvetkovski and Adam Ferrie, took The Stable behind the scenes of the Unignorable AdBreak.
The Stable: It was a huge job. Where did the idea come from?
Adam: The idea was inspired by Dylan’s lived experience as a kid, never seeing people like him on TV. And when he did, it was in a road accident commercial – someone with a disability as a result of drink-driving, shown as a deterrent.
Peter: When we first started talking to Dylan about the serious lack of representation in advertising, we knew this couldn’t simply be an awareness job. We needed to do something bold that made a statement, and more importantly, created real change. It was imperative this did not just become a flash in the pan moment, but rather, to get brands involved and commit to working towards increasing representation, inclusion and accessibility for people with disability with a lasting impact. Setting the standard for what disability representation looks like and to provide the tools and resources to create long term change.
TS: What statistics do you have about disability in Australia besides the 20% overall one?
Adam: Within Australia, recent research conducted by insight agency TRA in partnership with the Shift 20 Initiative, found that 33% of respondents could not recall ever having seen an ad featuring a person with disability, with a monumental 70% feeling that the current 1% level of representation isn’t good enough. The Shift 20 Initiative aims to change this, transforming disability representation and normalising seeing and hearing people with disability in advertising.
Peter: The research by TRA showed this commitment to representation to be not only socially beneficial, but also economically, with 49% of respondents saying they were more likely to purchase from brands showing fair representation for people with disability.
TS: How did you approach brands to join in? What was involved in getting the ads remade?
Adam: We invited marketing and business leaders from Australia’s most well-known brands to come together for a round-table pitch, where we presented this bold opportunity for them as a collective to come together to help shift the needle of disability representation. The response was overwhelming with the majority of the brands signing up on the spot and once this momentum built, others quickly followed.
With our partnering brands onboard, we determined which ads each of them were planning to run at the time of launch. We then worked in tight collaboration with our production partners, The Glue Society and Revolver, on which scene from each selected spot would be replaced. Here, Glue Society and Revolver’s scope and expertise truly shone through, coordinating a perfectly executed shoot plan and schedule to capture multiple brand spot reshoots over a two-day period.
Peter: Casting the right talent for the right spot was integral to the idea. We wanted to ensure we showed how someone with a disability could easily play the same role as the original talent. Through consultation with the Dylan Alcott Foundation we were mindful to ensure both visible and non-visible disabilities were represented across our spread of brand spots. Due to the existing talent pool for people with disability being small, in some cases, we had to reach beyond the traditional casting and talent agencies to the wider community to find potential candidates.
Glue Society was involved from the very beginning, collaborating closely with us on how we approached brands, ad and scene selection, casting, as well as creating a behind the scenes mini documentary. The overwhelming majority of the production re-shoots were led by Revolver, featuring both talent and crew with disability. In addition, there was also essential oversight from a variety of disability consultants and production partners such as Bus Stop Films to ensure the production environment was inclusive as well as accessible for all on set. This included consultancy on the casting process, production considerations for people with disability, disability riders, crew attachments and Auslan translators.
TS: The second challenge was to secure the media roadblock. How was this achieved?
Adam: We harnessed each brand’s existing media spots that were intended to run during the launch week and switched out the assets. Our partner, PHD, then worked collaboratively with all of the participating brand’s individual media agencies to coordinate the roadblock during the Sunday Project on Channel 10. An interview with Dylan launching the initiative led directly into the ad break, creating a cumulative, powerful and unignorable media moment.
Peter: The widespread support from the media owners across Australia has been incredible and never before have we seen a collaboration at this scale, leading to a world-first media approach. It truly highlights the importance, and support, of the industry in rallying behind this issue.
The Stable is a member of an activist group working to stamp out ageism in the industry, so I seized the opportunity to bang my head against the problem again [:ed]. For an industry that lives and dies on its creativity, it is very conservative when it comes to its own brand and business. Ageism seems to be the last outpost of inequality. People over 50 represent 35.1% of Australia’s population (and growing), but much less than 10% work in the industry. This is obvious when you look at ad campaigns – older people are poorly represented in numbers and in how they are presented. Is age less important than disability?
Adam: As an industry, it’s not only our responsibility to portray an accurate and authentic representation of the entire population in our storytelling, but it’s also equally important to ensure just as much diversity within our working industry.
Peter: If we truly are an industry that hangs its hat on reflecting culture, we should be an industry reflective of the broad culture we are so vocally portraying – this includes gender, race, ability and of course, age.
Special, Glue Society & PHD: Australia’s biggest brands create the Unignorable Adbreak
