2024 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

As people with Down syndrome become adults, employment is an important part of reaching full or partial independence. Being employed means not only earning an income; it also means learning new skills, an opportunity to build lasting connections with others, improved self-confidence, and a sense of self-worth.

Despite how valuable employment can be, many individuals with Down syndrome are still largely excluded from the workforce. Despite the community having a long-standing history of being valuable contributors in a variety of different sectors, their abilities are still underestimated. As a result, employers don’t consider them as potential candidates.

The brand set out to help solve the employment gap by creating a space for prospective employers to recruit the community and for people with Down syndrome to seek employment based on their skills.

North America is facing a historic labour shortage – with over 9 million open jobs – yet over 50% of people with Down syndrome struggle to find employment.

People with Down syndrome have been the victim of outdated stereotypes and misconceptions about their capabilities, which ultimately has led to their community being ignored by potential employers. In addition to misconceptions about the community’s contributions, employers that are open to hiring people with intellectual disabilities remain uninformed about how to reach and connect with these candidates.

Employers across North America are unaware of this untapped resource, let alone where to find them. At every stage of the journey, from recruitment all the way through to training a new employee with Down syndrome, the agency’s research found that employers were in desperate need of information, resources, and a designated place to connect and recruit.

Given the need for information, resources, and a space to connect and recruit, the brand set out to create a first-of-its-kind employment hub for candidates with Down syndrome. Naturally, they pursued a partnership with the best-in-class platform for fostering a professional network: LinkedIn.

Prior to the official campaign launch, CDSS released hyper-targeted social posts for the Down syndrome community, calling on ready-to-work individuals to join “inployable”.

Those looking for work were able to fill out a brief form on inployable.com, including their LinkedIn profile. If they didn't have a profile, a LinkedIn coach helped them build one. Next, job seekers are added to “inployable's” network – basically a company page on LinkedIn – where potential employers could find them.

The campaign launched to the public during Canadian Down Syndrome Week (October 23-29, 2022), via an impactful long-form video featuring a cast from the Down syndrome community advocating for their
right to work.

The video showcases “inployable” individuals sharing their thoughts on how the current hiring system values their resumes: overlooked, underrepresented, and not worth the paper they’re printed on. They are then shown provocatively destroying their resumes with the help of chainsaws, liquid nitrogen, and a woodchipper; all to make way for a new and better way of hiring: “inployable”.

The launch video featured a call to action for both employees and employers to visit the hub and discover opportunities to connect. Due to a limited media budget, the brand pushed the work out through social media, primarily on LinkedIn, as well as through PR and community advocacy groups associated with CDSS.

The campaign was supplemented with video content on the “inployable” page, featuring the brand’s Down syndrome cast explaining how the platform works and how to get the most out of the experience.

The agency also directly targeted major corporations in a series of OLVs – brands like The Home Depot, Ritz Carlton, and more – letting them know that “inployable” had ready and willing job applicants.

Since LinkedIn typically favours traditional workplace experience, the brand needed to ensure individuals with Down syndrome had proper exposure within the platform despite a lack of previous job history.

To shine a light on their unique and overlooked abilities, CDSS worked closely with LinkedIn to add over 25 skills to the platform (e.g., repetition oriented, routine oriented, repetitive data entry, inventory skills, etc.) This enabled us to accurately represent the strengths of the community and make them more discoverable for open jobs on LinkedIn.

For prospective employers, the campaign made it easy to discover potential employees and to access inclusive workforce resources and content within the network.

They offered employees resources on things like training processes, inclusive hiring, and interview adaptations to ensure they were set up for success when hiring an individual from the
Down syndrome community.

Since its launch in October 2022, “inployable” has seen incredible success. As a small Canadian charity, budgets and resources were slim, but “inployable” raised awareness about the community’s ability to contribute to the workforce.

The campaign achieved 149,000,000+ impressions for the campaign and based on the brand’s $7,500 in PR and media support, this equates to 19.867 impressions per $ spent. “Imployable” is also a space for connection with more than 700 companies, from 164 different industries and 91% of their following works in HR so they are directly responsible for recruiting.

According to Sean McConnell, LinkedIn Business Development Lead, “inployable is one of the fastest growing company pages on LinkedIn”. The campaign helped candidates with Down syndrome land a job with 17% of “inployable” candidates having already been hired.

Credits

Client: Canadian Down Syndrome Society
Chair: Ed Casagrande
Interim Executive Director: Laura LaChance
Marketing & Communications Manager: Courtney Cassel, Kristen Halpen
Sr Manager Fund Development & Donor Management: Pamela Massaro
Board Member: Ben Tarr

Creative Agency: FCB Canada
Chief Creative Officer: Nancy Crimi-Lamanna
EVP, Global Creative Partner: Danilo Boer
Executive Creative Director: Andrew MacPhee
Associate Creative Director: Sara Radovanovich
Associate Creative Director: Sally Fung
Copywriter: Sara Radovanovich
Art Director: Sally Fung
Creative Director: Ryan Dzur
Creative Director: Sam Cote
Chief Strategy Officer: Shelley Brown
Strategist: Audrey Zink
Community Manager: Serena Luca
VP, Managing Director: Tim Welsh
Group Account Director: Blake Connolly
Account Executive: Sophie Seidelin
Executive Producer, Post Production: Elise Beauvais
Colourist: Conor Fisher
Editor, Social: Tyler Strahl
Agency Producer: Dan Rankin
Project Manager: Hani Adam
Production Manager: Jennifer Cachola
Production Artist: Mark Parenteau
Production Artist: Joey Ng
Proofreader: Melanie DaSilva Pinto
Proofreader: Zohrin Jivraj
Retoucher: Marcelle Faucher
Retoucher: Carly Bright
Quality Assurance: Kim Cheung-Quenneville

PR: Glossy
Shannon Stephaniuk

Production Company: Suneeva
EP: Geoff Cornish
Director: Jason Van Bruggen
Line Producer/PM: Joey Bilewicz
DOP: Stuart Cameron
AD: Conor O’Brien
Script Supervisor: Patricia Homonylo
Phantom Tech: Lanny Bolger
AC: Alex Dametto
AC: Dorian Findlay
DIT/VTR: Dal Bridge
Sound Op: Nathan Street/Toronto Sound
AD: Brad Wilson

Editing House: Married to Giants
EP: Amanda Henry
Editor: Liam Crawford
Online/VFX:
Executive Producer: Emily Goldberg
VFX/Online Artist: Jonny Ames

Audio House: Grayson Music
Audio Producer: Sharon Yokoyama
Director: Mark Domitric
Engineer: Brian Bernard
Music Supervisor: Rich Hamilton
Social Content Production
Director/DP: Julian Peter
Sound: Marco Furgiuele