THE CHALLENGE
As part of its partnership with the National Deaf Children’s Society, Cadbury Fingers launched an ATL campaign called ‘Sign with Fingers Big and Small’ which was designed to highlight the feelings of exclusion and isolation experienced by deaf people.
Our job was to amplify the brand’s wider positioning of ‘bringing people together’ and build awareness of the issue by actively encouraging Brits to learn a bit of BSL to bridge the communication gap.
THE IDEA
To better understand the experiences of deaf people and show what it’s like to miss out, we used the power of emotion and FOMO to recreate that same feeling of exclusion amongst the hearing community, as the deaf community experience on a daily basis.
We launched a multi-layered campaign with a social stunt that saw deaf Love Island finalist Tasha Ghouri and Giovanni Pernice, (Strictly partner of deaf contestant Rose Ailing-Ellis), use their powerful social media platforms (combined following of 2.1M) to reveal exclusive gossip but in BSL – AND with no subtitles or explanation for 24 hours.
An influencer programme featuring supporting social media talent also revealing ‘new news’ on their channels in BSL ran alongside to further reinforce the FOMO.
RESULTS
We really got the nation talking, but this time it was in British Sign Language. Media went mad for it with coverage in every national news title. And the public got more and more frustrated, with comments rising on social, which was exactly what we wanted. Our plan had worked!
- 6 minute segment on Sky News sunrise when Tasha taught presenter BSL
- Over 500 million opportunities to see/hear campaign coverage
- 350K likes and over 5,000 positive comments on talent social posts
- Over 5.5 million combined organic video views (with no spend)
- +33% believe Fingers bring people together
- 22K BSL phrases learnt – increase of 300%
- 3 new BSL courses funded benefitting 250 families
