‘Justice for all’ are three words we, as Americans, solemnly pledge, affirming our allegiance to country and community. But when it comes to social justice for people with disabilities, there is still a wide gap.
Academy Award winning actress Marlee Matlin shares her voice in this video on struggles of people with disability and social justice. Continue reading
How can something as simple as a new tea kettle design create buzz in advertising and creative industries and become transformational for people with disabilities? In this post’s two examples, Michael Graves and OXO share the power Universal Design is bringing to the disabled community. 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
“Madison Avenue is full of blue-bloods.” This was the blanket description of the industry’s leaders that a friend provided when I shared that I was going into advertising. Within venerable, established Madison Avenue agencies, an Ivy League diploma, New England upbringing and WASP background helped… and being a minority didn’t. Although never directly discriminated against, it was obvious to see (even for someone more than half blind) that hiring challenges permeated the industry. For the disabled minority, it seemed that ad industry culture fostered a silent segregation in which few advertisers embraced inclusion and fewer agencies integrated diversity. Continue reading
Have you seen the Benz branded bionics? Disability and advertising made it into the headlines of Adweek, one of the industry’s leading news publications, when Matthew James, a 14-year-old British amputee, wrote to Mercedes Benz asking the automaker to help fund a new one. Continue reading
This post is my small way to commemorate what would have been the 100th birthday of advertising creative revolutionary Bill Bernbach. From the beginning of his career, personal labels caused him to be an outsider. Because he was a Jew, Bernbach was segmented from the traditionally blue-blood, Ivy League world of Madison Avenue of the 1940’s. Bernbach saw an opportunity for creating more than just advertising – he used his differences to start what has been defined as the creative revolution. Eventually the outsider label shifted from being a negative to the ultimate positive goal for most advertising professionals and where they aspire creative to live. Continue reading
From facebook to twitter, blogs, flickr and Klout, social media gives most people more collaboration, conversation and online connections than ever before. For those with disabilities it opens doors between isolated individuals who are physically and often emotionally detached. For me, the only time I get to interact in-person with others who have a prosthetic eye is in the ocularist’s waiting room. Sites such as LostEye.com (love the celebrity list) and it’s corresponding facebook group are creating connections with disabled groups who may otherwise have never reached out to others with the same challenges. That’s powerful. Continue reading
The artwork in the blog header shows signs that people easily recognize for both advertising and disability, but, for me, these symbols, only share a small portion of the full spectrum of the worlds of advertising and disability. Continue reading
Ashley Fiolek, a young motocross superstar who, by the way, is deaf, was recently recognised at the 2010 Courage in Sports Awards for her achievements and efforts in action sports and charitable work within the deaf community. Known in motocross circles as the Dirtbike Princess, Ashley is sponsored by, and stars in this breathtaking and, in the end, surprising ReBull commercial. Continue reading
If alive today, David Ogilvy, the long-heralded advertising impresario, would have celebrated his 100th birthday. While many articles of late have touched on his ability to weave captivating storytelling into headlines and copy, which eventually led to masterful leadership of one of the first multi-national advertising agencies, few mentioned his role as early promoter of disability. Continue reading
