Selling the Unsellable: Marketing Disability

Although many specialist disability services are funded through the NDIS, the NDIS approach is to maximise participants’ access to mainstream programs. How do community organisations learn how to be more inclusive? And what are the barriers preventing full participation of people with disability? Basically, the answer is attitudes. Changing attitudes is difficult. It requires consistent and targeted campaigns.

There have been some successful perception changing campaigns recently with the ‘Vote yes’ for same sex marriage equality, the ‘white ribbon’ campaign to raise awareness about the consequences of family violence and historically with the ‘Slip, slop, slap’ and ‘Quit’ campaigns that educated the community and change behaviour and attitudes in mainstream society. So how do we start changing attitudes about disability?

Recent TV shows have gone some way in getting the mainstream to sit up and take notice. Examples include You Cant Ask That and Employable Me, along with the Youtube sensation, Jeremy The Dud. This panel, facilitated by the fabulous Jeremy the Dud actress Chloe Hayden, will discuss how mainstream marketing strategies might be used to influence attitude change in the wider community.

Marie McInerney, Roving Report for SDAC18, caught up with all the panelists in a more intimate one-on-one conversation.