The Valuable 500 is a business to business disability inclusion initiative. Its goal is to convince private sector companies to make disability their business priority: something almost none of them want to do. The company hired the agency to create an advertising campaign to help convince business leaders at The World Economic Forum in Davos to put disability on their board agendas.
90% of companies claim to prioritise diversity but only 4% prioritise disability. We created a new word to describe such companies. DIVERSish. To illustrate the most common types of diversish behaviour, we created a campaign that exposed the toe-curling reality of selective inclusivity in business. Our message was simple: if disability is not on your agenda, neither is diversity.
Diversity and inclusion programs are extremely popular within the business world. 90% of multinational corporations claim to prioritise diversity. But only 4% prioritise disability. Something that affects 1,5 billion people globally. Businesses all around the world tend to simply ignore disabled people and their needs, all while claiming to be passionate about diversity and inclusion. This campaign was aimed at high-profile executives of influential private sector companies. The goal was to convince them to end decades-long procrastination, make disability their business priority and put it on their board agendas.
The campaign was commissioned specifically to be
launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The WEF officials loved it. But
then banned the client from showing or mentioning it. In under 24h we had to
come up with a plan B. We hyper-targeted the delegates with the film on social
media, then retargeted them with messages from disability activists. And even
when the delegates left Davos, we continued targeting them with additional
reasons to sign up.