Pictured in the featured image are USA athlete Tatyana McFadden and British athletes Hannah Cockcroft and Melissa Nichols celebrating victories and holding up their respective country’s flag.
But what if the Paralympics competitions expanded into awarding medals for each country’s best inclusion of people with disabilities in advertising? Britain would be leagues ahead of the U.S.A., and here’s why. Continue reading
The Rio Paralympics haven’t even started, and the games are already in a crisis of shifted funding for athlete participation, diminished staff and potentially empty stands. But the Sagamihara massacre and Japan’s surrounding miasma dealing with disability, make these hurdles seem small compared to what lies ahead for the games, athletes, advertisers and so many others when Tokyo hosts the Paralympics in 2020. Continue reading
Two ad campaigns that came out days apart portray people with disabilities in totally different lights…one for the better and one not so good. What this tells me is that we have a long way to go to educate and inform agency creatives and advertisers on best practices to incorporate people with disabilities consistently and positively. Continue reading
Sammy Davis Jr. was an underdog iconoclast, talented actor, singer and had a damn good looking glass eye. How does he connect to the Paralymics? The UK’s Channel 4 created the groundbreaking three-minute advertisement We Are Superhuman, which is set to the iconic Sammy Davis Jr track, Yes I Can. The song has been re-recorded by a band of disabled musicians that come from from around the world, featuring lead vocalist Tony Dee. Continue reading
Paralympians Break The Ad Barrier was the title of a BusinessWeek article published in 2008. Just in the recent past, only three years ago, disabled athletes were granted a small advertising foothold of endorsements and sponsorships mostly dominated by gold medal Olympians. Major marketers including Visa and McDonalds, both longtime supporters of disability advocacy and awareness, wove compelling stories of disabled athletes into their general marketing campaigns centered around the 2008 Olympic games. Antonio Lucio, Visa’s chief marketing officer said, “The person we decided to feature, Cheri Blauwet, is not just a Paralympic athlete but an incredible female role model.” Continue reading