The Shift 20 Initiative, changing perception of people with disability through advertising, has for 2025 turned its attention to agencies.
Shift 20 has unveiled a group of networked and independent partners, committed to creating work that is more inclusive and representative of disability.
Alongside founding agency Special, another 14 agencies including 72andSunny, Bread Agency, BMF, Cummins&Partners, TBWA, 303 MullenLowe, Today the Brave, Droga5 ANZ, part of Accenture Song, Paper Moose, Akcelo, Apparent, Dentsu, DDB and Ogilvy have committed to joining a community of best practice: helping create advertising and communications that are more inclusive; leading conversations with brands, and sharing key learnings and progress.
The group, alongside Shift 20’s brand partners, will consider how they can be more inclusive of people with disability across concept development, casting, production and digital accessibility.
Agencies engaged have access to educational resources that give them the tools to challenge attitudes around disability representation and play a role in driving broader societal change, as well as ongoing access to the Shift 20 team.
Agencies will also partner with Shift 20 in centrally tracking disability representation through brand and agency work, helping to quantify the impact the collective is making.
Agencies will report back quarterly on key measures such as the number of productions that include talent and crew with disability, and assets with closed captions and audio descriptors; to create meaningful benchmarks for following years.
“Whilst the launch of the Shift 20 Initiative showed significant demand for higher levels of disability representation, it also highlighted the incredibly important role that agencies can play in shaping the landscape of advertising for the better," said Priya Addams Williams, Shift 20 Initiative lead, Dylan Alcott Foundation.
"There was a huge desire from creatives, copywriters, casting agents and beyond to ensure the positive inclusion of people with disability was a conscious and considered step in the creative process; and we couldn’t be more excited to continue welcoming agencies into the fold throughout the rest of the year.”
Lindsey Evans, partner and CEO at Special and board director at Advertising Council Australia, said, she had an incredible sense of pride and gratitude to have partnered with the Dylan Alcott Foundation on the creation of the Shift 20 Initiative.
"From the very beginning we were sure that what we saw as an incredibly important area for development, other agencies would quickly see too," she said.
"It’s been a wonderful journey in the last year seeing this ethos make its way through every touchpoint of our agency with disability representation becoming a norm, not a ‘nice to have’.”
Matt Michael, CEO at Droga5 ANZ, part of Accenture Song, said inclusive advertising reflects the true diversity of our world — vibrant, varied, and full of possibility.
"By partnering with Shift 20, we ensure we're staying true to this belief. We're proud to join the growing movement of agencies advocating and accountable for representation.”
Wez Hawes, CCO at 72andSunny, said he's had the pleasure of working on various productions with Dylan Alcott and seeing the Shift 20 Initiative in action on set.
"It really makes a tangible impact on people's lives and we feel it is a must for a modern and progressive agency like ourselves. It's one thing to say it, it's another to act."
In 2023 the Dylan Alcott Foundation set out to shift the needle on disability representation across Australia with the launch of the Shift 20 Initiative.
The initiative aimed 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.
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