Trick or Treat: The BSL Edition

Not all heroes wear capes. Some wear crocs and live in a quiet community in Worcester. Or so we found out during our most ambitious equality & inclusion campaign yet for Cadbury Fingers. As part of the brand’s long term CSR partnership with the National Deaf Children’s Society to raise deaf awareness and teach the nation a little bit of BSL, the Sign With Fingers Big and Small Initiative was now in its third year.

Previous campaigns have focused on sport and celebrities, but this year we wanted something more community-led and our inspiration came from research showing that 79% of deaf families miss out on one of the UK’s most anticipated seasonal moments of the year…Halloween! Communicating in darkness and mask wearing makes lip reading difficult and is generally a miserable experience for the deaf community. We changed this for deaf 7yr old Ada who had never experienced Trick or Treating as we created Britain’s most BSL friendly street. Cue over 200 pieces of coverage globally, 7 min BBC news segment, 50% of Brits now willing to learn BSL, 92,000 page views on our educational hub, 65,000 watches of our ‘little lessons’ on YouTube, and 11 different community groups committing to running similar schemes next Halloween. Forget tricks, this campaign was a real treat for everyone involved. And the results speak for themselves.