Accountability
Accountability starts with educating your senior leadership and making a decision to act that is carried through into a plan.
Begin your brand’s accessibility journey
We believe that advertising is simply one individual communicating to another and to be as authentic and inclusive as possible, advertisers and agencies need to ACT. Flock Associates’ ACT Toolkit aids your accessible journey.
- Be Accountable by increasing your circle of diversity
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Be Collaborative by surrounding yourself with companies and people that promote diverse values
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Trade with diverse organisations and media channels
Organisations need to be open to growing, learning, and evolving their processes and teams to address the needs of a wide and diverse audience.
Addressing accessibility is not necessarily about getting it right the first time. Even the smallest steps can make a big difference in speaking to and including as wide an audience as possible. However, we appreciate that change is hard, that it takes time, budget, and a company-wide shift in behaviour. Many of the individuals we have spoken to have said that initially accessibility in advertising felt like an overwhelming topic, and that they didn’t know what to do or say.
We’ve taken their learnings, advice and recommendations as well as thought leadership from Responsible Marketing Agency and Flock Associates developed for ISBA and consolidated them into immediate and long-term actions combined to help guide your accessibility strategy. Of course, this is not an exhaustive list, more of a helpful starter for ten. There will be many more steps that you can take along your journey to becoming more accessible.
Ultimately, all brands and agencies need to be thinking about accessibility from the start, reframing it not as a problem that might impact creativity but as an opportunity to build a strong brand and grow your audience.
The ACT toolkit
The needs and requirements of every facet of society vary and can be complex; however, we believe that by following the principles of the ACT framework, testing, and learning from initiatives and sharing these experiences with others, in the future, all brands should be able to consistently offer personalised, accessible experiences across all advertising, platforms and at every stage of the customer journey.
The ACT Framework has been developed by Flock Associates and is used to guide authentic representation strategies for advertisers. Flock Associates are a Marketing Transformation consultancy that work in association with ISBA and the WFA to drive industry change. Contact the team to find out more information about their ACT Framework and thought leadership.
01 Increase your awareness of accessibility in advertising.
Find out what it means to have a disability and what a lack of accessibility means, how it can impact your team members, friends & family, and customers. Becoming and remaining inclusive is a continuous process, not a one-time event.
02 ‘Opt-in’ to subtitles.
We propose that the industry works towards instructing their partners to always ‘Opt-in’ rather than ‘Opt-out’ for subtitling. This means that advertisers will have to choose if they need to remove this functionality from their adverts. We hope that this will help to start a positive movement but also an important change in mindset. This is a simple, quick fix and takes just a few hours to implement. Rates vary by volume and advertiser but are generally a few hundred pounds per advert.
For placements like cinema, subtitles can also be simple to implement. The key is to inform your creative agency early enough so that files are supplied with caption copy and so that there is sufficient time for any necessary approvals to take place (generally approximately 24 hours).
03 Update your strategy and plan for the next two years.
Take the time to review and update your strategy with your partners and consider how you might need to adjust:
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Budget – to include sufficient allocation for subtitles, audio description, alt text and where possible signing
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Timings – to ensure campaign phasing allocates enough time for the integration of accessible advertising elements
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Media placements – to reflect budget implications and capability
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Measurement & KPIs – to include accessibility metrics
“At Diageo, we are committed to nurturing the most inclusive and diverse culture. For our marketing, this means using our brands to shatter stereotypes, celebrate diversity and ensure inclusivity.
Collaboration
Collaboration is essential to successfully deliver accessible campaigns. You may be familiar with the phrase “Nothing about us without us”, a motto that advocates for the participation of people with disabilities in the creation of strategies that affect their lives. You should plan to include people with lived experience of disability throughout your campaign development process, and work with your partners across the entire development process to ensure accessibility is prioritised.
01 Engage with specialists to review and develop your work.
To truly be accountable, organisations will need to collaborate with specialists and/or consumers with disabilities. The RNIB and RNID provide fantastic support and guidance around the topic of accessibility. They work with major brands such as P&G and Unilever providing consultancy on accessibility workstreams and are available to engage with brands to review your current work and provide feedback to inform any future plans or campaigns that you might have planned.
With an aim of effective reach, P&G has spoken directly to consumers with the RNIB to understand how features like audio description improve the advertising experience, and how this aids in communicating the brand messaging as intended. This has helped them to tailor their accessible advertising to the needs of their consumers.
02 Update your campaign planning and execution process.
Look to integrate some of the following elements in upcoming campaigns:
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Add in check points to your process. Encourage your team to question the work at each stage to determine if the brand and message can be understood by as many audience members as possible through:
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Conveying the message through subtitles and / or signing
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Audio description – ensuring there are enough audio cues and space for the brand to be identifiable and the key messages understood
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Include accessibility as part of your creative briefing. Engage your creative agency as early as possible in the campaign process, ensuring that accessibility is an integral part of creative development and ideation.
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Allow enough time to collaborate with industry experts (industry bodies, consultants, focus groups, etc.). Ask for their advice at brief stage, when developing scripts, concept creation, ideation or conducting research. It will help to gain a fresh perspective and avoid costly and timely rework later down the line.
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Allocate appropriate budget for accessibility to ensure that this cannot be cut at any point in the process. Subtitling rates vary by volume and advertiser but are generally a few hundred pounds per advert. However, signing and audio description costs can vary.
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Incorporate enough time to implement accessibility features:
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Subtitles – Allow 2+ hours.
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Audio description – Ideally this should be incorporated into any script or planning from the beginning; however, if applied in post-production, allow 3-4 days for any changes and approval process.
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Signing – Allow 1 week, please note that signing specialists are in short supply so this will need to be booked well in advance.
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It is important we consult those who depend on access services to ensure we continue to bring genuine value with our accessible advertising.”
Run an accessibility pilot
Planning and running an accessibility pilot in your organisation can help you to understand how your ways of working can best adjust to ensure accessibility is prioritised throughout the campaign development process. You are likely to find differences between regions and media for your organisation to adapt to in addition to discovering how your teams work best together.
Key tips for running an accessibility pilot:
- Ensure that your pilots explore the entire range of accessible advertising features you plan to include in your target.
- Set KPIs for the pilots which will inform your wider company rollout.
- Identify a market or two with an advanced accessible media landscape to ensure the pilots can run on viable channels.
- Identify passionate ambassadors within a few key teams to drive the pilot to fruition.
- Engage the disabled community in the creation of your pilot campaigns.
- Ensure the findings are logged as the pilot unfolds – the good, bad and ugly truths that will form a successful rollout plan.
“Over the last 18 months we have launched pilots implementing closed captions, audio descriptions and alt text across brand campaigns in key European markets to better understand how to meet the needs of people with hearing and sight impairment within our marketing. These pilots were useful to define optimal ways of working internally, with our agency and media partners, and as part of our broader brand strategies and the insights have informed our accessible marketing approach.”
Sarah Fleury, Diageo Progressive Marketing Lead, Global Head of Digital & Data, Baileys
Trading
Most organisations find that engaging specialist partners helps them to make progress quickly and ensure they are considering all the facets of accessibility that are needed. For some aspects of accessibility, partners with technical skills are key to helping organisations develop their capability and understanding of accessibility.
01 Look to work with audio description partners for your next advert.
Whilst opting-in for audio description is a positive step, often audio requires a more considered approach and planning. It’s important to give audiences using audio description the space and cues needed to fully understand and experience the brand. This should be considered at script stage, but advertisers can also benefit from engaging with audio specialists to ensure a comprehensive end-to-end experience for audiences with blindness and low vision.
02 Engage suppliers that can help provide expertise or skills you need.
At the start of your accessibility journey, your organisation may not have all the expertise needed within your existing teams and suppliers. Seek help where it’s needed and remember to always include people with disabilities throughout your campaign development process.