The Shift 20 Initiative for the Dylan Alcott Foundation, a charitable organisation with the core purpose of helping young Australians with disabilities, dominated the AdNews Agency of the Year Awards 2024.
"Especially given the geopolitical climate at the moment, being recognized for the work we're doing at shift is really wonderful," Dylan Alcott Foundation Shift 20 Initiative lead Priya Addams Williams said on stage when accepting the award.
The Initiative first launched in September 2023 as the Dylan Alcott Foundation set out to shift the needle on disability representation across Australia, aiming to bring the poor rates of disability representation on-screen (1%) much closer to the 20% of Australians living with disability.
The campaign launched with a collective of the country’s leading brands and has seen significant success with a rise of over 10% overall recall of disability representation in advertising post launch. Most recently, Shift 20 also unveiled a world-first TikTok channel, Shift 20 Casting Call, for casting people with disability.
Special Group, the initial agency behind the Initiative, won a string of awards for its work on Shift 20 including the overall AdNews Agency of the Year, Creative Agency of the Year, Ad Campaign of the Year, the Brand Partnership Award, Social Responsibility/Pro Bono Award, Diversity Award, Game Changer Award and, for Uber, Marketing Team of the Year.
Special Group CEO Lindsey Evans said the Initiative is really not about Special Group or even the Dylan Alcott Foundation.
"It is about the industry that came together and believed in what's possible," Evans said.
"It was all the brand owners that came together, and it's our industry and working together that has created the change and is making the gains in this space.
"So this really belongs to the industry and so thank you very much."
Special Melbourne partner and CSO Rebecca Stambanis said the wins are a testament to what can happen when agencies put their walls down, come together and bring creativity at a problem.
"We can create real change in this industry. So thank you to all our incredible partners who came together and said, 'let's tackle this'. But we have such a long way to go, we are only getting started," Stambanis said.
"We literally just had a meeting with Dylan this morning, planning what we need to do in the next six-12 months, as we can't take our foot off pedal until we get true representation in this industry."
Andy Morley, Lindsey Evans, Priya Addams Williams and Rebecca Stambanis.
As one of the first brands to sign up to this Initiative, Uber and Uber Eats APAC senior director of marketing Andy Morley reminisced about the first meeting he had with the Shift 20.
He shared how Dylan Alcott at told the group "this is kind of weird, its like Simpsons episode about the secret club the Stonecutters, you marketing people have secret handshakes and secret codes."
"But to see senior marketers from some of the biggest brands who compete fiercely at the marketplace all around Australia sitting around one table all with a positive intent and working on a common objective is really special," Alcott said.
"It was only special because Dylan brought everyone together, and his personal story so passionate that it inspires us," Morley said.
"Then to all the hard working people at Special Group, to Priya who's actually kind of also was part of the Special Group, but then also put up a hand to go spearhead this project externally after, just inspired a lot of people to do something that was very different to what we normally do.
"So very, very proud to be part of that journey. And I think we're at the very, very start of that journey, and it's really important that we stay on this to really make a change."
Special Group.
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