Liz Stull
Strategic Planner at Leo Burnett Israel
Bnei Brak, Israel
TitlePeople. Not Symbols
Agency
Campaign People. Not Symbols
Advertiser Access Israel
Brand Access Israel
Date of First Broadcast/Publication 2017 / 12
Business Sector Racial/Ethnic/Minority/Disability Awareness
Story People all over the world know the iconic international Symbol of Access used to identify parking spots reserved for the disabled.Yet, in Israel, hundreds of healthy drivers ignore the symbol every day and park in disabled people’s spots.So in anticipation of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, Access Israel – an NPO for people with disabilities, decided to raise public awareness for the issue by initiating an action that would sensitize the public and echo loud enough that politicians would no longer be able to ignore the issue.On December 3rd 2018, the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, we repurposed the iconic but ignored international “parking for disabled” signs. Using the signs as a media platform, we replaced the two-dimensional illustrated version of the symbol with the picture of real people. We photographed 52 disabled people, including members of parliament, Paralympic medalists and celebrities. Capturing them on a blue background identical to that used in the sign, we dressed them in white clothes and staged them to look exactly like the International Symbol of Access. We then printed their pictures to the dimensions of the original parking signs and, in one night, replaced thousands of illustrated disabled parking signs in 17 cities all over Israel with our human version.A discussion surrounding our action soon scaled on social media and news outlets eagerly covered our campaign. But most importantly, after a decade that ‘Access Israel’ had been trying to reach the Israeli parliament, our message finally made it to the public agenda and reached the antechambers of the Israeli parliament who pledged to modify the law by the end of 2018 by increasing fines for parking violators by 100%. Finally, the government saw and heard the real people behind our campaign and not just the symbol!
Philosophy For December 3rd "International Day of Persons with Disabilities", Access Israel – the NPO whose mission it is to promote accessibility for people with disabilities in Israel, is replacing all disabled parking spot signs with the pictures of real people. You've probably seen it happen a zillion times and you've maybe even done it yourself once or twice. By that I mean park in a spot for disabled people. Yeah, we've all seen it happen before: a car blitzing into a parking spot reserved for the disabled only for its driver to step out seconds later on two perfectly functioning legs. Sure, if you ask the driver he'll probably have a whole battery of excuses to go with his blatant misbehavior and disrespect. Anything ranging from: "I'll only be a second", "I'm just picking up my wife" to "What's the rush? You're sitting in a wheelchair anyway!" and our personal favorite: "I DIDN’T SEE THE SIGN". Well, it's got to stop. That's why 'Access Israel' decided for the December 3rd "International Day of Persons with Disabilities", to put a face on people with disabilities. The NPO decided to raise the public's awareness to the issue by replacing the disabled icon on thousands of disabled parking signs throughout the country with the picture of real disabled people. To do that, we photographed a total of 52 people including well-known disabled Knesset Members and Paralympic Medalists and uploaded their stories onto a dedicated website where people could read more about them and how they came to be disabled. The project which was launched via a teaser campaign a few days ago, will go live on December 3rd with 12 agency teams spanning out over the country's cities and replacing signs overnight. In places where we ran our test trials, the very action of replacing the signs with people's faces sparked interest and debate. So this is bound to get interesting and create traction. Ah, and in case you're wondering we placed some hidden cameras to measure the number of infractions per hour – the results will leave you speechless.
Media Type Case Study
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Strategic Planner

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