Before the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games, Channel 4 released this amazing campaign featuring 140 disabled athletes and superhumans. The campaign had to beat the very successful campaign of 2012, that first called the outstanding paralympic athletes superhumans. “Meet The Superhumans” form 2012 was the campaign that helped the Paralympics sell out for the first time, delivered Channel 4 its biggest TV audience in ten years, and changed the way many people felt about disability. So the 2016 campaign had some pretty large shoes to fill, but embracing diversity in a new, strong and cheerful way definitely worked. It succeeded in showing how strong, skilled and determined disabled athletes have to be compared to athletes without disabilities – It almost made olympic athletes like Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt seem like amateurs.
Disabled athletes are straight up awesome, and if this campaign doesn’t prove that, then I don’t know what will.
Impact:
With 33.7 million views on facebook alone and 7.5 on youtube, this campaign has really touched the hearts of millions! Research showed that the campaign shifted attitudes – 74% of people felt more comfortable discussing disability after seeing it and 59% felt it improved their perception of those with disabilities.
Video Case:
