CLIENT: Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB)
AGENCY: Wavemaker
AWARDS:
Campaign Media Awards 2022: Creative Idea: budget under £250K
Campaign Media Awards 2022: Best use of experiential
Wavemaker brought the issue of inaccessible packaging to life in a bold and provocative experiential campaign that applied pressure to UK businesses to help solve a major barrier to independence for blind and partially sighted people.
CHALLENGE
90% of people with sight loss find information on packaging difficult or impossible to read despite it being a legal requirement to include ingredients and nutritional information on food products.
This is a major barrier to independence for blind and partially sighted people and many are suffering a poor quality of life as a result.
To combat this problem, RNIB asked Wavemaker to deliver a bold and provocative campaign that would raise awareness of the issue and apply pressure to UK businesses to make their packaging more accessible.
STRATEGY
Wavemaker knew that their first barrier to overcome was finding a way to get business decision makers to really empathise with the issue – they weren’t wilfully creating inaccessible packaging, they just didn’t know it was a problem.
However, Wavemaker knew a standard B2B campaign wouldn’t be enough to grab their attention. Wavemaker needed to put decision makers in the shoes of a blind or partially sighted person and have them experience the issue first hand.
To support businesses to make the change quickly, Wavemaker also needed to demonstrate that the RNIB had both 1:1 packaging consultants and ready-to-go solutions for them to adopt – whether that be utilising Navilens (QR technology developed for blind/partially sighted people) or braille/sensory labels on pack.
SOLUTION
Wavemaker created #designforeveryone, a campaign designed to take business decision makers on an empathy journey towards making more accessible packaging a reality.
Wavemaker built the ‘What’s in Store’, a corner shop stocked with deliberately inaccessible packaging, from intentionally vague branding to items entirely removed of product information. Hidden cameras in the shop filmed people’s reactions when confronted with inaccessibility first hand, while the shopkeeper revealed that this is often the reality for people with sight loss when they’re out shopping.
Wavemaker then used digital media to amplify this rich content across targeted video and social. They also used trade publishing to ensure they were putting the issue on their audience’s radar, whilst simultaneously alerting them to the help available from the RNIB to make accessible packaging a reality.
IMPACT
The campaign smashed its target of delivering great value to the client, and the powerful message on how with a little more empathy, we can make design truly accessible for everyone gained international press attention. The client had 17 new corporate relationships which includes big brands like M&S and Coca Cola.