People. Not Symbols
Access Israel
Issue 46 | March 2018
Agency
Leo Burnett, Israel
Creative Team
Creative Chief Creative Officer Ami Alush Creative Concept Mila Dayan, Chen Federing, Meital Miller
Production Team
Production Producer Manager Simi Ben Zikri, Menny Zarhia Graphic Team Viki Bergman, Shlomi Amir, Elad Ziv
Other Credits
Other Chief Executive Officer Adam Polachek Chief Strategy Officer Shai Nissenboim Chief Account Officer Idit Zukerman Account Supervisor Inna Tubin Account Executive Ilana Peisakhin Strategic Planner Liz Stull
Date
December 2017
Background
December 3rd was International Day of Persons with Disabilities. Access Israel, a NPO whose mission was to promote accessibility for people with disabilities in Israel, wanted to do something to mark the day.
Many drivers choose to park in spots reserved for the disabled. They have a battery of excuses to go with this disrespect, from "I'll only be a second" and "I'm just picking up my wife" to "What's the rush? You're sitting in a wheelchair anyway!" and "I didn't see the sign."
In Israel there were 180,000 disabled people. In the previous year, requests for disabled permits had grown by 16% while fines for parking in disabled spaces had topped 20,000.
Idea
The idea was to raise awareness of both the day and the issue by replacing the symbol of a wheelchair on thousands of parking spaces throughout Israel with pictures of real disabled people.
52 people were photographed, including members of Parliament and Paralympic medallists. Their stories were uploaded to a dedicated website, where people could read more about them.
A teaser campaign sparked interest before 12 agency teams replaced thousands of signs overnight on December 2nd.
Results
Wherever the new signs were put up there was interest and conversation. In addition, news media carried the story, raising awareness of the fact that the quality of life of disabled people was being impaired.
Our Thoughts
I suspect that this is behavioural economics at work. Because fit and healthy people find it easy to rationalise parking their cars in disabled spaces ("I'll only be a minute", "Picking up my wife is a valid reason" etc) they needed to be reached emotionally. And humanising the problem would have pricked a few consciences, surely? It's not just a space the motorist is occupying but someone's. Someone with a face, a name and a story.