Your Disability Pride Plan
Let me fill you in on a little secret: 91% of the content that marketers create intended to feature and celebrate disabled people uses stereotypes, stigmas, and tropes that the disability community hates. Literally 91%. Honestly, even I was shocked when I read this stat from research that Yale + Valuable 500 did together. I figured it was high but…91%?! Could that be true?
We had a huge event about two weeks ago that focused on disability inclusion marketing strategy and afterwards my calendar flooded with over 25 Fortune 500 brands, and the agencies that represent them, booking time for a free 15 min consult to discuss their disability pride plans. The same thing happened on every. single. call. They'd open talking about their Disability Pride Plans with such enthusiasm - these are amazing leaders with inclusive hearts trying their best to walk the walk and put inclusive marketing into action. But if I'm being honest with you, basically every campaign idea was falling into that 91%.
If you're reading this and thinking “wait a minute… she's talking about me!” don't worry, your secret is safe with me. I promise you each of these five common mistakes we're going to breakdown are happening within most brands. Remember…91%
Stick with me for 5 minutes and I'll explain why this happens, what brands are doing wrong and provide you with a few options for how to make sure you're not one of those creatives.
Why does this happen?
1. Disability inclusion isn't taught or focused on in marketing school.
2. Despite more than 90% of companies having a DEI initiative, only 4% focus on disability within that.
3. Folks hear "disability inclusion" and immediately think “Oh, that's for HR” and check out.
4. Well intentioned ignorance due to proximity to disability: one of the most common things we hear is “Oh… Sally's brother/son/husband/cousin has a disability, she's passionate about this topic and is guiding us!” Okay love Sally's passion, and my dad has the same, but my dad would tell you to say “handicapped.” Proximity to disability doesn't make someone an expert.
What are brands doing?
The biggest mistake brands can make for Disability Pride Month is to do nothing. Truly. What are those brands doing? It's such an easy win if you know what to do. But after that, we narrowed the most common cringe categories down to the following:
1. Not Saying Disabled:
At least 25% of the creative teams I spoke to were trying to be inclusive of disabled people in terms of casting or narrative, but when it came time to looking over their script or campaign name they'd say stuff like… “Celebrating ALL Abilities!” or “Celebrating EVERYbody!” You're thinking… what's wrong with that? Well… the issue is that these campaigns aren't about all or every body and ability… they're about people with disabilities. During our Pride month. Not picking up what I'm putting down yet? Okay, so imagine during LGBTQIA+ Pride seeing campaigns that were like centering both cis/het couples and couples from the queer community. Big cringe, right?
Pride months are about recognizing and celebrating the community they're built for. Not even acknowledging our community's preferred language during that month is… a choice.
I made a whole video for you here, and I'll be doing a video about each of these leading up to July.
2. Bragging About The Minimum:
One of my favorite examples of this is the Chick Fil A commercial. Watch it here.
You're thinking… what's wrong with that? Well… the issue is that the red couch series is a series from the brand that celebrates “inspiring” things that happen in their stores. And this spot positions treating a frequent customer, who happens to be disabled, as a frequent customer as….inspiring? Not picking up what I'm putting down yet? Okay, so imagine any brand making treating members women or people of races other than white the same as other customers as… inspirational? Barf? Gross? Absolutely not?
And here's the deal, I genuinely believe that although Chick Fil A is deeply problematic in many ways…I think they were trying to do the right thing here. I think they wanted to promote the fact that they want everyone to feel welcome in their stores. I think they spent money and time to try to do the right thing. But even the best intentions can turn sour if you don't have the right guidance.
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3. Non-disabled Saviorism:
So if you're not a PR girlie (using that term as a gender neutral one) you might not know of this term called the Halo Effect. It's when instead of saying how great you are, you try to get other people to say it for you. This makes sense, right?
If you're at a party and there's someone you don't know and they're saying stuff like
“Wow, I'm soooo inclusive!”
“OMG, I am sooooo good to disabled people!”
“I literally am the best to disabled people!”
…you'd get a big ick in your stomach, yeah? But… if you're at a party and your friend sees that new person and is like
“Wow, I talked to that person and holy smokes they're such a good listener!”
“OMG, I used to work with them, they're volunteer with orgs that help disabled people on the weekend!”
“I went to this fundraiser they hosted benefitting an org that fights for disability rights, it was the best!"
… you'd be like omg I want to hang out with this person they sound so great!
Same goes for your campaigns. If your brand truly is that inclusive, and wonderful towards disabled people then it should be easy as pie to pass them the mic and get our community to say this for you. It's what Apple does. It's what Google does. If you have to tell us you're inclusive vs our peers telling us you're inclusive, you're likely not as inclusive as you think. And if that's the case, cool, let's move forward and fix that. Do a hiring initiative with Inclusive Networking to increase your employment of people with disabilities. Bring in Joshin to make your workplace more accommodating. Join the Misfit 100 and make a public pledge to double the representation of disabled people. Create a more adaptive product with GAMUT.
The opportunities are endless, but basically - you can't just talk about it. You gotta be about it. And if you're not, but tell us you are, we'll smell it from a mile away.
4. Running before walking:
This one kind of builds off of the last one, but if you haven't been intentional about disability inclusion before, and plan a big campaign, you need to follow it up with ongoing inclusive work. Otherwise, it is a matter of time before you'll get called out for tokenism. What we're seeing is brands want to obtain the trust of the disability community before doing any of the work internally or externally to EARN our trust. For example, brands go from zero disability inclusion to wanting to create narrative driven content and expecting it to land well need a bit of a reality check. Disabled consumers are looking at that saying “…and?” For these folks we recommend starting with our Gen Pop framework for narrative, using July as a kickoff for some internal and external CSR / PR opportunities and using Disability Pride 2025 as an opportunity to SHOW (not tell) how committed you are to the community. Actions speak louder than words, baby!
5. Incomplete Narrative:
Let's go back to that Chick Fil A commercial for a minute, okay? So remember how we said we know they likely were trying to do the right thing, but didn't realize how this would sound?
If they had us on our On Demand Retainer and had sent this through to us for approval here's what we would have said: Hey John, I love the bond that Joseph and JoAnn have. Plus, what a star within your company! Mom and JoAnn are spot on that Autistic Customers are often overlooked. I'd like to suggest that you do some sort of CSR or internal company education program surrounding that, so that you can have a closing screen that says ”visit www.chickfila.com/autisminclusion to learn more about how we're making our stores more accommodating for neurodivergent guests." and then actually execute on that. I know that Joshin would be really great to train all of your team members and work with your ERG. Want an introduction?
As it stands, the commercial could be perceived as celebrating not discriminating against disabled people, which should be the floor not the bar. I believe Chick Fil A can be a leader here, and I think it would land better if you had an initiative to say “we're going the extra mile!” instead.
See the thing is that most of the time when content is problematic, all they needed to do was have a conversation or five with an expert and it would've saved them time, money and it would have performed beautifully.
We believe in you. We love you. We see you trying, and we want to help. Will you let us?
If you're reading this and thinking “wtf am I supposed to do then?" I'm happy to jump on a call or consult on your campaigns. Truly, most of the stuff we're doing is as simple as that fake message I'd send to Chick Fil A. You're so close, let me help you shine.
Book a call here.
ASU Honors | Marketing the power of accessible technology | 2023-2025 Obama-Chesky Voyager Scholar | JLYL RFK Human Rights Fellow
8moThis is so insightful, absolutely love the way you break it down
Kelsey Lindell great stuff!