Despite there being over 17 million people living with cerebral palsy worldwide, it is one of the least understood disabilities.
Since its conception in 2012, World Cerebral Palsy Day has grown into a global movement to celebrate those living with cerebral palsy annually on October 6th.
In collaboration with The Cerebral Palsy Alliance (CPA), Purpose created the #MillionsofReasons campaign & a new World Cerebral Palsy Day brand to raise further awareness throughout the broader community about the people affected by cerebral palsy, and the millions of reasons to strive for change.
Despite the high prevalence of cerebral palsy globally, many people in the wider community do not understand what cerebral palsy is or what it means to live with it.
In previous years, World Cerebral Palsy Day focused on celebrating the cerebral palsy community, but failed to reach broader audiences not affected by the condition. In order to improve the experiences of people with cerebral palsy, the general population must learn more about the disability and the people living with it.
The goal of the #MillionsOfReasons campaign was to amplify the voices, experiences, and needs of people with cerebral palsy to the wider community in order to raise awareness about cerebral palsy. By having a cohesive campaign brand and message, more organisations were empowered to mobilise audiences under one, united banner.
The campaign encouraged people living with cerebral palsy and their immediate networks (friends, families, health care providers, peers) to share their “reasons” for celebrating and speaking up on World Cerebral Palsy Day. We helped to mobilise influencers and CPA organisations to speak to specific ‘reasons’ in their geography by equipping them with a campaign toolkit. Through the use of a global hashtag and campaign name, World Cerebral Palsy Day 2021, united different global organisations to celebrate and amplify the cerebral palsy community.
In order to achieve our theory of change there were three key messaging phases. These phases were not consecutive, but rather were live across different assets and audiences throughout the campaign period.
Educate
Bust common myths about Cerebral Palsy and lay down the facts about the scale and presentations of the condition
Celebrate
Invite caregivers, supporters, and families to celebrate those living with cerebral palsy
Activate
Empower Cerebral Palsy organisations and their advocates come together to put a specific ask to their local leaders that will make the lives of people living with Cerebral Palsy even better
In order to create a meaningful campaign, we had to gain insight into the key needs of the cerebral palsy community.
Through surveys and interviews with advocates, partner organisations, and support networks, we learnt what was missing from the current approach to World Cerebral Palsy Day. These insights drove our final concept for World Cerebral Palsy Day.
Enter, #MillionsOfReasons, because every person living with cerebral palsy is a reason to celebrate.
We developed a campaign that encapsulated the truths and desires of the cerebral palsy community that would educate, celebrate and activate the general population.
In order to indicate a new era for WCPD, create a holistic global experience and maintain flexibility for the different organisations to be able to use it, we decided to create a whole new WCPD campaign brand.
The new brand needed to be bold, eye-catching, modern and flexible. We chose bold fonts, a simple, high contrast colour palette (incorporating the traditional and recognisable World CP Day Green) with simple motifs that represent both the idea of people coming together, and the outline of the brain to symbolise cerebral palsy.
Our brand templates were adopted far and wide and some beautiful brand-in-the-wild examples came from the global organisations.
We created a variety of campaign tools that were available on our website and shared with partners. The toolkit was compiled of an event guide, social media assets, posters, slide decks, and logos.
All of the assets were available in 15 different languages for key partners to use and distribute to their networks. Partners were encouraged to use social assets on their own social media pages in order to create campaign cohesion.
Purpose was also involved with the campaign activation and execution which included social media asset creation and social media management.
Through crucial day to day community management, we managed to partner with key influencers in the cerebral palsy community to join the campaign movement and post on their personal social media pages.
This community management led to user generated content from advocates, resulting in a reach of almost 2 million users across Facebook and Instagram.
Community management also encouraged many users to share their “reasons” and stories via direct messages or in the comment sections of posts. All comments were acknowledged, creating a greater sense of community and interaction.
As this campaign relied heavily on user generated content, influencer and community outreach and management was a key part of the campaign execution. Campaign engagement from leading influencers in the cerebral palsy community was high, with individuals creating posts, reels and stories using campaign assets.
World Cerebral Palsy Day is a global movement supported by partner organisations across the world. It was important for the campaign to encapsulate the needs of the global cerebral palsy community and partner involvement was vital in achieving this. Partner update emails, surveys and partner management ensured that partners stayed involved with the campaign throughout the process.
for Equity & Evidence