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.

Partnering with the Dylan Alcott Foundation, we were tasked with not only raising awareness around the current lack of visibility of people with disability in mainstream media, but also inspiring long term change.

Our campaign objectives were to:

1. Raise awareness around the lack of visibility of people with disabilities in advertising.

2. Incite brands to commit to increasing disability representation and inclusion.

3. Begin the shift towards normalising disability in our everyday lives by increasing representation in communications to truly reflect the Australian population.

4. Ensure long lasting change by creating a centralised body and resources to help brands increase representation and inclusion, with the ultimate goal of reaching true representation by 2028.

To help increase representation and inclusion of people with disability, we created The Shift 20 Initiative - a collective movement centralised around an open source utility, a hub with tools and resources to help brands be more inclusive and make the shift towards normalising disability representation across all forms of media.

To launch the initiative, we united 13 of Australia’s biggest brands in a world-first coordinated effort to create ‘The Unignorable Ad Break’ - reshooting key scenes in their most iconic ads, replacing existing talent with people with different forms of disability to show how true representation should look in our everyday culture. 

The ads formed a nation-first media roadblock, creating mass inclusion on a scale never before seen in Australian Advertising.

Post the ‘Unignorable Ad Break’ launch moment, the reshot ads continued to run over the following months and will continue to do so, showing the commitment of the founding brands to disability representation.

Supported by nationwide TV, OOH, Press and Radio spots, the launch of the campaign was one of the largest co-ordinated advertising, media and PR efforts ever undertaken in Australia.

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

- 600M impressions. Estimated combined reach of 96% amongst Australians 18+

- 144 pieces of media coverage in AU, 467 pieces of coverage in the US. Opportunity to see: 434.9M

- 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.