Abstract
This paper presents the research study on a public relation campaign run for positive motivation and psychological perspective of the children with physical disabilities. The paper discusses the background of the campaign #ToyLikeMe and how public relation and other communication tools falling under the umbrella of public relation helped campaign reach to millions of people across the world. The paper utilizes the knowledge of internal and external markets, launch and openings, promotional materials, social media, visuals and images and other tools to understand the importance of communication as one of the most effective strategies for the success of a campaign.
Toy Like Me Campaign has stood for the rights of disabled children for their psychological well being and for the awareness of disabilities as just another body conditions and not an abnormality. The campaign is successfully running all over the world and thanks to the well thought out public relations strategies and tools that helped the campaign reach to every parent of the disabled child and the toy companies all over the world. This campaign has led the children and parents understand the positivity of disability in themselves and others too.
Overview of Disability
Disability in Children
Among one of the most marginalized, tortured and excluded groups of the society, are the children with disabilities. They face discrimination almost daily or one should say 24/7, in the form of lack of adequate legislation and policies for them, negative attitudes from all other 'abled' sections of the society, have no to minimum access to education, clean water, food, sanitation, shelter and healthcare and they are effectively barred from realizing their rights to survival (Murphy and Carbone, 2008, p. 1058).
Estimates done by the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, about ninety three million chidren are reported to live their life with some kind of disability and this number could be much higher. Children with disabilities have to fight hunger and poverty too as they are believed to belong to the poorest section of the society. These children are less likely to have access to medical services, go to schools and have proper sanitation facilities and have their say in the community they live in. Children with disabilities are highly vulnerable as their disabilities put them at a greaer risk to get physically abused and also, they lack proper nutrition, guidance or humanitarian assistance in the time of emergencies (Murphy and Carbone, 2008, p.1060).
According to the World Report on Disability, out of more than one billion disabled people, every 1 in 10 are children and eighty percent of them belong to developing nations (Kudo et al., 2015. p. 52). In any developing society, children with disabilities are the most excluded ones because of their condition and also due to lack of knowledge and understanding about the causes and implications of disabilities and stigma surrounding them (Patel and Kleinman, 2003, p. 610).
Girl child with disabilty has double disadvantage in the developing nations as they face discrimination because of her disability and her gender. In developing societies, girls with disabilities are confronted with social stigma as well as constrained by traditional cultural barriers and gender roles (Murphy and Carbone, 2008, p. 1060).
Children with disabilities either do not attend any formal eductaion or if they do, then they start school at a very later stage (Quine and Rutter, 1994, p. 1275). Also, they are unlikely to get promoted to secondary level from primary school. This happens because the tecahers and guardians have a lack of understanding of their needs and requirements. There is no classroom support for special children and it also lacks proper learning facilities and resources (Patel and Kleinman, 2003, p. 614). Parents and teachers are not properly trained at teaching such children. This has a long term impact on the children with disabilities because when they grow up, their potential social, individual and economic development get barred (Murphy and Carbone, 2008, p. 1060).
Types of Disabilities in Children
The following are the types of disabilities that can affect children (Kudo et al., 2015, p. 53):
1. Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: It is a condition that makes it difficult for the child to sit still, pay attention and control behaviour (Quine and Rutter, 1994, p. 1280).
2. Autism: It is a neurologicla disorder affecting the ability of the child to understand, communicate, play and relate to any other person around him or her.
3. Blindness or visual impairment: A child with visual impairment can be partially sighted, legally blind, have low vision or can be totally blind.
4. Cerebral Palsy: In this case, the child is not able to use muscles and body parts due to injury to the parts of the brain.
5. Deafness and Hearing loss: Loss of hearing can be defined as a temporary or permanent impairment in hearing that negatively affects the overall development of a child, partilcular in education and cognitive abilities. Deafness is a severe form of hearing impairment in which children are fully unable to process linguistic information through hearing, either with or without amplification.
6. Deaf-Blindness: This disability is the total inability in a child to hear and see. Such children need special care to fulfill their communication, educational and developmental needs.
7. Developmental Delay: It is a kind of disability in which the child is not able to reach his or her developmental milestone at the right time. This delay can occur in areas like motor, social, language and thinking skills.
8. Down Syndrome: It results in intellectual disability due to one extra chromosome in the child.
9. Intellectual Disability: It happens to a child when he lacks proper mental functioning due to which he is not able to communicate well, take care of his own and his things and also lack social skills.
10. Learning Disabilities: A child with learning disabilities have specific kinds of learning problems.
11. Speech and Language Impairments: When the child suffers from the problems in communication and oral-motor functions like swallowing, sucking, drinking and eating.
12. Spina Bifida: It means cleft spine. It mean that there is an incomplete closure in spinal column.
13. Traumatic Brain Injury: This condition occurs when the brain is hit accidently or shaken violently.
This list has other form of disabilities too but here for the report and our campaign, we are going to concentrate on physical disabilities since our campaign primarily relates to the children having physical inabilities. Before we move on to know about the campaign, it is important to understand the psychological perspectives of the children with physical disabilities. This will pave the way towards understanding the objective of our campaign under study.
Psychological Perspectives of Children with Physical Disabilities
Disability for children or anyone in the society means inability to function normal. A child thinks that disability is something that his or her body possesses and that makes them feel that they are less than the other 'abled' children of the world (Axelsson et al., 2014, p. 523). The world sees disabled children as tragic and less valued. Disabled children are bullied by nondisabled children of their ages. Disabled chidlren, as they grow, start focusing on shame, guilt, and loss that are associated with them being disabled (Dann, 2014, p.452).
The society gives negative representation of the physically disabled children and that leads to child's detrimental metal status. They no longer feel accepted and normal in their own family, school and society. A study has revealed that 50% children with physical and learning disabilities commit suicide as they reach adolescence stage (Axelsson et al., 2014,p. 523). Neglect of such children leads to emotional stress, exacerbate learning disabilities, anxiety and depression. Such children escape school, create troubles at home and their relationship with parents, teachers and friends are not normal too.
Poor children having disabilities are unaccepted, neglected, deprived and stigamtized (Patel and Kleinman, 2003, p. 614). They feel unsafe and vulnerable in their own society and this fear gets converted into anger, anti-social thoughts and elements, revenge and negativity which becomes detrimental to them as well as the society (Patel and Kleinman, 2003, p. 614).
Therefore, to save physically disabled children from shame, guilt, anger, revenge and anti-social, we should educate each and every parent, teacher, guardian, special educator, health care professional and general society about the needs and requirements of physically disabled children and their right to be accepted in the society (Sibley and Etnier, 2003, p. 247). Also, simultaneously, it is important for the children to understand that they are equally important for the society and they can win over their disability, get education, get a job and have normal functioning in the society (Axelsson et al., 2014, p. 523). They should have higher self esteem and independence as they grow and develop in their life. This is possible through anti-discriminatory and encouraging anti-disability educational programs and campaigns (Patel and Kleinman, 2003, p. 613).
Let us discuss one such campaign that has helped children and the world understand their disability as their strength and how public relation techniques have helped the campign win millions of hearts.
Background of the Campaign
The campaign under study is Toy Like Me Campaign. The campaign #ToyLikeMe® was established by the UK kournalist Rebecca Atkinson, in April 2015, when she noticed that toys lack representation of disability and of toys also represent some form of disability and the children will accept their toys with disabilities, then in an unconscious manner, they are accepting their own disabilities and hence will not feel motivated to move ahead in their lives (#ToyLikeMe).
Rebecca Atkinson (who herself grew up wearing a hearing aid as a kid) has been working as TV and print journalist for last two decades and has always stood for people with disabilities, especially the children with disabilities and has always been concerned of how industries view disabilities. Rebecca invited some mothers of physically disabled children to help her launch Toy Like Me Campaign. She launched the campaign on Facebook and Twitter accosting to toy industries of the world so that they could represent disabilities in their toys and would let the world know that disabilities are acceptable (#ToyLikeMe).
Idea behind Campaign
In the world full of 150 million disabled children (Kudo et al., 2015, p. 53), the United Kingdom has about 770,000 disabled children (Kudo et al., 2015, p. 53). These children are excluded from the society, the very moment they get born, as soon as their disability gets recognized by the parents or doctors or educators. Exclusion from the society makes these children crave for their acceptance from the world and continuous rejection makes them unwanted for themselves too. This put them in an exile at this very tender age. Even the toys, which are the ojects of their entertainment, fuel for their growth and development and starting blocks of their life do not represent them. No child had ever seen a doll sitting in a wheel chair, or a super hero with hearing aid or with any kind of disability at all. This concerned Rebecca and the mothers who helped her with the campaign (#ToyLikeMe, May 18, 2015).
The 2.9 billion Euro global toy industry had only seem American Sign Language Barbie (Kudo et al., 2015, p. 53), Playmobil's wheelchair elderly doll and Mattel's Becky with plaster on pink wheelchair but soon these dolls were called off and this gave the children a message that only the old ones look good on a wheel chair, plastered legs do not come under permanent disability. The kids from every place on earth have been represented through dolls and figures but disabled ones were never represented and this gave the objective to this beautiful campaign, Toy Like Me Campaign (#ToyLikeMe).
Play is that aspect of learning where children as well as adults learn empathy, where people learn recieving and perceiving information about the world and actively participating in the world's positive development. Accepting a doll with disability will make the disabled children learn that it is normal and nondisabled children will learn that disability is not at all harmful and not a taboo which will teach them to have empathy towards their disabled counterparts and will not exlcude the disabled any more.
How it all started?
People all over the world were asked to send the pictures of toys that reflected disabilities but in a positive way, through social media platforms Facebook and Twitter. Parents and teachers around the world stared sending pictures of American girl doll having hearing aid and bald Moxie doll. Toy Like Me Campaign team made viral the pictures of Disney's Tinker Bell with cocklear implants. The campaign started doing really well and parents from all corners of the world could relate to the campaign as this represented their own personal journey. The Makies, the world's largest manufacturer of three dimensional personalizable dolls, also joined hands with the campaigners and are making dolls with disabilities. Makies have made the world's first doll having a facial birthmark. As a result of this campaign, Mattel Barbie, Playmobil and LEGO too are considering manufacturing of disabled dolls, representing the world's acceptability and normality of the disabled children (#ToyLikeMe).
The campaign is successfully making the whole world, both children and adults realize that these new dolls with disabilities are not any special. They are just another individual dolls with similar disabilities as children in the real world do and if the dolls can get love and acceptance, then why not the real people?
Role of Public Relation in the Success of #ToyLikeMe® Campaign
Overview of Public Relations
In simple words, public relations is shaping up and maintaining a positive image of the organization, company, campaign or an individual in the eyes and minds of public or the clients or the followers, if it is for a campaign. Public can be anyone who would form an opinion about the client (Grunig, 2013, p. 2).
Public relation is one of the ways through which a company, organization, individual or a campaign communites with media and public (Grunig, 2013, p. 2). This communication can be directly or indirectly with media or public with the objective of creating and maintaing the best possible image and the strongest relationship with the people or the audience.
#ToyLikeMe® Campaign has won millions of hearts, due to a wide reach (#ToyLikeMe). The campaign started off quite slow but with well thought out PR activities by Rebecca and her colleagues, the campaign held the pace and started delivering the results much beyond the expectations. Creating and maintaining a good public relation did wonder for this project. The project was able to get proper attention of the target audience and greatly influenced their opinion and decisions regarding accepting disabilities in children (#ToyLikeMe).
PR is essential for a campaign in order to create a positive image of the campaign. This image will enable the campaigners to creae a meaningful relationship with the target audience. For them to have a positive images, people use various public relation tools like media, newsletters, conventions, conferences, social media, blogs, other online activities like forums and word of mouth publicity (Wilcox and Reber, 2016, p. 1). One should always understand that public relations is much more than just advertising and promotion (Marsh et al., 2015, p. 13).
In today's world of communication, publicity is the best strategy to reach to the world, ofcourse, the cause being the biggest strategy. Here, in case of #ToyLikeMe® Campaign, both cause and publicity struck the right chords. Let us know more about PR strategies taken up by Rebecca and her coworkers.
Objectives of Public Relation Strategy
The following are the objectives of promotion of #ToyLikeMe® Campaign (#ToyLikeMe):
1. To increase awareness of children and adults about disabilities through disabled dolls
2. To represent disabilities as positive force in a community
3. To curb any discrimination against disabled children by providing the opportunity of acceptance of disabilities when chidlren accept disabled dolls
4. To communicate effectively the cause and the message
5. To get funds and increase donations for the campaign
Current and Potential Markets for the Campaign
The campaign has three main markets to hit on. First is the general population of the world which on a daily basis deals with discrimination, disability and related issues, either people are victims of discrimination due to disability or they discriminate with the disabled ones. This population includes both children and adults. Children, however, are the primary targets. The message of the campaign goes to women, men, children, adolescents, adults and elderlies across the world to accept children with disabilities with open arms and help them with whatever resources they can (Kudo et al., 2015, p.56).
The second market comprises of toy companies, making dolls and figurines. The Makies, Mattel Barbie, Playmobil and LEGO are some of the companies, mostly from the US, that forms the second target market (#ToyLikeMe, May 18, 2015). The third market is the funding agencies which can be the toy companies or other companies too, who can help the campaigners go across the world to educate gloablly about child's disabilities. The third market also involves social support organizations who can support the campaign to educate the population about child disabilities, what they feel, their challenges, conditions and solutions. Then there are news media which can help in dissemination the message across borders. News media act as a tool as well as, they work as markets.
Public Relation Theory
The PR Theory that stands here being the most relevant theroy for Toy Like Me Campaign is the Diffusion Theory. This PR theory deals with faster and effective means of spreading the information in a community. According to this theory, diffusion of innovation takes place as follows (Smith, 2012, p. 5):
1. Knowledge: A community with many individuals or large numbers of communities become aware of an innovation and they have a fair idea how that innovation works.
2. Persuation: People start forming positive (or negative, but this does not apply here) attitudes toward innovation.
3. Decision: People start getting engaged in activities that adopt the innovation.
4. Implementation: People start putting innovation in their daily use.
5. Confirmation: People evaluate the result of innovation related decision that they had already made.
This theory applies well in the case of campaign under study. Firstly, the campaigners used social media and other PR activities to raise awareness about dolls with disabilities. Then, they made the markets realize that this is how they are going to shun discrimination and exclusion of their own disabled children and other disabled children near them. People, gradually started sending their ideas of dolls with disabilities and started following the campaign. Finally, they evaluate how much positive they and their children have become about disabilities in other children or in themselves (Kudo et al., 2015, p.59).
Public Relation Activities
Social Media
The campaign started with social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter. Rebecca and friends chose Facebook first of all to reach out their friends and public in the US and UK because most of them belonged to these two states. Facebook and Twitter have the highest numbers of followers and there is every chance to converse and share things with public on these two platforms. All of them were quite comfortable using Facebook and Twitter due to ease of use, so they just hit the platform (Wilcox and Reber, 2016, p. 1).
The campaign started with a hashtag, #ToyLikeMe and this was used in every social media post so that they could organize all the posts on to one page. This allows to have all the conversation on one topic at a single space. Rebecca also encouraged the supporters to use this hashtag to keep track of all the interaction and make unfamiliar people too join the campaign. Using hashtag helped peoplle find the page easily and have more brand awareness.
Social media platform was used to share the designs and ask for more designs of disabled dolls, globally. A Facebook page was created that was abolutely campaign specific and this gave the followers that Toy Like Me Facebook page is the central page that would fight for the cause without dilution (#ToyLikeMe).
As a public relation startegy, social media platforms can work wonders if the users are able to understand the page insights and analytics based on reach, like, re-tweet, comment, shares and demographics. Through this, Toy Like Me team determined at equal intervals that what all has been working on the page to attract parents and other target markets and what other adjustments need to be made for campign followers to like the campaign more because if they are going to hype about the campaign, it is going to spread the word through word of mouth marketing (Wilcox and Reber, 2016, p. 1).
Another great PR activity that won the hearts of campaign followers was that Toy Like Me (TLM) campaign engaged with the audiences on both the social media platforms. Also, Team TLM was able to get just the right content mix for posting it on both the pages. To drive social sharing, both informative and funny content was used for the campaign followers (Wilcox and Reber, 2016, p. 1).
The social media campaign on both the pages have been pitched to the world journalists to publicize campaign and the cause (Smith, 2012, p.3).
Going Viral
Team TLM started making the toys and designs with disabilities and asked the parents world wide to do the same for the campaign. The team used lot of video content for the same and this went viral and the campaign stories were shared on reputed news outlets of the world that included, The Guardian, The HuffingtonPost, Mail, Yahoo, Metro, Al Jazeera, Upworthy and Distratify. The team got a chance to increase their PR activities on radio and they appeared on Australia Radio, Radio Singapore, UK, Canada and Italy Radios. The news of Toy Like Me Campaign was covered by the reputed news channels of the world such as CNN, Fox News, Sky TV, BBC, Channel 5 and many more (#ToyLikeMe).
Images and Visuals
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are becoming more image-based as well as video-based. Today, the trend is to feature larger, prominent imagery. Therefore, all the social media platforms for Toy Like Me have large imageries and interetsing videos. It’s because of that famous phrase that a picture is worth a thousand words, is absolutely true. Rebecca and team knew that using quality, branded visuals in a campaign can noteworthily strengthen its efficiency, while at the same time creating brand familiarity and awareness. About 90% of information transmitted to the brain are through the visuals that are fed to brain (Wilcox and Reber, 2016, p. 1), and images and visuals are processed sixty thousand times faster in the brain than just the texts– and this allows the sender to send a message to the audience in quick and precise manner. In addition to this, the visuals are able to raise better emotional connotations, helping the campaigner achieve the relevance of the message and increasing the likelihood that the audiences are able to feel and connect to the message – thereby positively contributing towards the achievement of the campaign's objectives (#ToyLikeMe).
Approching The Makies
The communication team of Toy Like Me Campaign contacted Makie Dolls, the 3-D dolls manufacturer to make personalizable dolls with a white cane and hearing aids. They liked the idea and within two weeks they manufactured dolls with disabilities to support Toy Like Me Campaign and presented them to the world. This is how corporate sponsorship worked in favor of the campaign (#ToyLikeMe).
Toy Like Me Forum
Another PR acitivity that hit the bullseye was Toy Like Me Forum that initiated by Makies, only a few months after the campaign was launched. The forum always asked innovative ideas and designs for the dolls so that they can come up with dolls in demand and this way,it supported the campaign in positive.
Petitioning
Toy Like Me has recently started a change.org petition that has asked Playmobil and LEGO to produce the dolls and figures in real. These petitions were signed by more than 50,000 campaign followers for PlayMobil, US and 20,000 campaign followers for LEGO, US. Playmobil has already started manufacturing the dolls in support of the campaign for the cause of child disability. Big organizations from the USA coming out to support the campaign is a big success for this UK started global campaign.
Website
People have already created a buzz that soon the campaign will have its own website, with a domain name of toylikeme.co.uk, that will inform the parents and carers about disabilities in children. They will be able to purchase dolls which will be the positive represenation of their children. This is a great way to have positive image in the minds of campaign followers that this campaign and campaigners are going to stick around for a while.
Blogging
Rebecca and her coworlers kept on blogging as guests on different sites that promoted and publicized the camapign in the positive light. Large number of people follow those websites and when they read the blogs they came to know about the campaign. They liked it and followed the campaign. This way the number of followers increased. Other writers who supported campaign too wrote blogs and this acted as testimony in the favour of the campaign. People can read the blogs whenever they want. In this way, Toy Like Me made a good share of followers from blogging (#ToyLikeMe).
The Conclusion
Ofcourse, the PR and then the idea (innovation) and the cause. All three were no less than any. However, public relation activities supported the campaign constructively and in the follwing manner:
1. Positive Messages: All the PR activities on social media and other media channels like television, radio and internet have disseminated positive message about the #Toy Like Me campaign. This #Toy Like Me campaign has created happiness, warmth and excitement among the parents having children with disabilities and also among children with disabilities.
2. Commonplace Interesting: The #Toy Like Me campaign has taken comparatively commonplace things, whether it is just a toy or a well-known health and social issue of chidren with disabilities, and has turned them into fascinating issues capturing the imagination and drawing people further into the campaign. The issue of children with disabilities is talked about with great determination and fascination. #Toy Like Me Campaigners have attached great values with the campaign with strong message therefore, even the common people are showing great interest in its success.
3. Structured Communication: The communication system of this campaign is being managed extremely well. The system here has closely targeted audiences who are extremely well understood. The right message is sent through right communication channel to each of parent, educator, teacher, carer, toy companies and other stakeholders. Messages on social media are being well managed content and structure wise (internally) and with right consistency (externally). Success stories are being shared as soon as they develop. The messages are first of alls trictly reviewed and then sent to the audiences via clearly defined communication channels.
4. Credibility of idea and people: The #Toy Like Me campaign with time, has established its own credibility and every follower senses the truth and rightness in every aspect of the campaign as well as the campaigners. The people, idea, cause and the product (dolls), all seemed to fit in. They are feasible, competent, rational and trustworthy. People have accepted the terms and conditions and consequences of the campaign which is fair to one and all.
The Future
#ToyLikeMe Campaign is now all set to raise more support and funds to take this campaign to the next level of success and change, grow Toy Like Me in a bonafide non profit organisation. Toy Like Me is soon going to design, develop and run its own official website which will be an online hub for everyone interested in this noble cause- and turn the team's viral social media campaign into one of the lasting online resources present in the space that celebrates disability in toys. The soon to become firm will advise parents, educators and carers to look for representative toys that will enable them to continue calling and consulting on the toy industry globally and support the disabled children to join the cultural mainstream.
The campaign is doing great for children with disabilities and their parents because this campaign is letting the whole world know that disability is not a curse, it is just another body condition which poses different challenges in the life of the person having it and it is the responsibility of non-disabled people to give the disabled ones right to live with dignity, pride and individuality. For the parents of a disabled child, it is their responsibility to make their child understand that disability may not be normal but it is not abnormal too. It is just a different body condition and they are no less than any individuals with all the body parts intact. Toy Like Me is a beautiful campaign with well thought out public relations strategy therefore it is reaching out to the every corner of the world. It is helping children with disabilities fight for their rights.
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