Video - July 23, 2025
Interview: Creating Award-Winning Inclusive Advertising with Christine Hemphill & Annabel Jerome
Transcript:
Christine: I’m Christine Hemphill, the Founder and Managing Director of Open Inclusion, a disability and age inclusive research agency that worked with AMV and Currys on this delightful ad. I am a white woman in my mid-50s with dark hair, with a little bit of graying, and I’m sitting in a wooden room with ‘open’ on the wall behind me.
Annabel: Hi, I’m Annabel Jerome and I’m a Senior Account Director working on the Currys account at AMV BBDO. I am a white woman in my 30s. I have long strawberry blonde hair and I’m wearing a white shirt.
So in May this year, Currys launched “Sigh of Relief,” which was Channel 4’s diversity and advertising award-winning campaign. And the brief for the award was to challenge the industry to reach more of the population than ever before by making a TV ad that was inclusive by design. So we went away and developed a campaign that helped remove those barriers that people with hearing and visual impairments often face when they view an ad. So to make it more inclusive, we placed that audience at the heart of the idea and looked at how we could make the ad itself more inclusive.
And then in terms of the creative execution, our campaign focused on the experience of three customers with accessibility needs when they’re shopping for tech appliances in a Currys store, and it features a very over-exaggerated sigh of relief when their needs are met by one of the Currys colleagues. And in true Currys style, it approaches this in a rather fun and humorous way.
How did you ensure that disabled voices shaped the Currys campaign from the start?
I think the first important step for us was to find the space for these discussions to take place, and that actually started about a year or so before the pitch. So given AMV’s partnership with Open Inclusion, we invited our Currys clients along to a meeting with Open Inclusion and members of their community. And we actually started having those collaborative conversations before the Channel 4 brief landed. As soon as it had landed and we were working on that creative brief for the competition, we organized a survey to test the initial concept. And started gaining insights from the disabled community around their specific needs, particularly when it came to buying tech. And then from then on, I think we just made sure that community engagement was built into every step of the process. So we had three further rounds of focus groups working really closely with two co-creators from Open Inclusion, and we also received guidance from the RNIB and RNID. So we made sure that disabled voices were really shaping the direction of the campaign.
Christine: I think it’s really important to start by knowing that you don’t know enough yet, and then to take the time to learn and to ask and to understand what’s relevant for your brand. What’s really important in this campaign was to find that golden thread that was going to really drive the campaign start to finish, and for this one, it was all around colleague-customer interactions. And by engaging with the disability community well before the campaign even started, knowing that there was this understanding that there’s so much opportunity in retail for better interactions that both work well in the moment of the interaction, but also offer products and services that are better aligned to the person’s needs. And that then became that golden thread that could be continually pulled on and utilized throughout the campaign.
What, in your opinion, is the key to authentic collaboration rather than just consultation?
Christine: Collaboration is more than sharing space—it’s making space and then sharing influence. And I think this is really hard, particularly in a very creative environment, because you also need that ambition and that cohesiveness of the idea to take an idea from start to finish.
So sharing space is a little bit messy, a little bit complex, very real, and it takes real intent and integrity all the way through the process. And I think this ad really showcased both all of that being true, but also the value of that being true and how you can really generate something much better at the end if it is multilayered engagement across the full creative process and with different stakeholders at different times.
And we had this lovely combination, as Annabel shared before, of both having some really consistent people right throughout the campaign.
And having different groups of people coming in and informing parts of the campaign or checking and validating that what was created really landed as it was anticipated. So you know, empowered collaboration versus performative consultation—you’re going way beyond that kind of transactional one-off engagement into actually ongoing design and creativity.
Annabel: I think it was so important to make sure the insights we received from the community informed our decisions at every step of the process. So we really listened to the feedback and we acted upon it to make sure those stories we were telling were truly inclusive, to make sure it was really baked into our process. A good example of this, I think, and one part of the campaign that required particular focus and consultation, was the integration of the narrator in each scene. So their role was to address the audience and sort of break the fourth wall by talking directly to the camera, and it was initially challenged in some of the hard of hearing and sight loss focus groups.
As it hadn’t been done before and it wasn’t typically how audio description is embedded within a campaign. But I think from a creative point of view, most of the Currys campaigns are narrated by a Currys colleague. And so we thought it was really important to approach our latest “Sigh of Relief” campaign in the same way. And I think, as Christine said, it was by creating space for each other, we were really able to have these discussions and sort of shape the work together.
Christine: So one of our lovely co-creators, Brendan, who’s blind, noted at the launch of the ad that he felt really empowered at every stage of the process, from ideation to scripting and production, and that nothing had been done about us without us, which is one of the key catchphrases of the disability community, and that this really was inclusion by design rather than accessibility as an add-on. And that really enabled the humor, the creative, and the storytelling right from the start. And it’s that deep collaboration that really shapes a powerful ad and helped everyone working on the ad to grow and learn from each other. And I think it’s that growth and learning from each other that’s what collaboration truly is.
In terms of the output itself, what difference do you think having those disabled co-creators made to the final ad?
Christine: The starting point is without disabled co-creators in ads about disability, it’s really uninformed braveness, and I would say, you know, foolhardy braveness. Whereas with deep consultation and proper collaboration all the way through, it gives people confidence, it gives people competence.
And it gives the ad authenticity. So it’s transformative both to the creative team as they go through, but also the end product itself and how that’s likely to land, you know, with different audiences. Humor particularly is really tricky. Not everyone has the same sense of humor, and this is an ad that brings humor to it, which I just love. That takes more bravery, but it also takes more sensitivity to the nuance of the communities that are involved in that humor.
Annabel: So I think we learned from the groups that sometimes it’s the simple product features that actually really make a difference. And one of the learnings we took through was the large clickable dial, which is one of the hero product features in our campaign, and we discussed quite a lot of product features in the focus groups to really understand what features were going to benefit our audience. And so we wanted that to be part of making that authentic narrative come to life, and so I think having that space to have those discussions enabled us to make all of those creative changes right up to the day of the shoot and look at how we could optimize to really make sure that story and that narrative was as authentic as possible.
Equally, you know, in the deaf community, one of our co-creators there who’s deaf BSL user talked about how important it was to have products that really suited the community’s needs, and in their case, you know, the live captioning laptop that’s truly valued by deaf and hard of hearing customers. But also ensuring that the customer service interaction was authentically deaf aware and landed well, and that the ad’s visual humor was also really appreciated by the community.
That’s just reminded me as well of the moment that we have of the Dyson vacuum cleaner. And we had this really lovely moment, and something again we learned from the focus groups about the fact that the vacuum cleaner was cordless and how beneficial that would be. And in one of the groups someone mentioned, “Oh that’s great. No more tripping over the cord.” And we made sure that we brought that through into our campaign because it was just such a lovely moment that really resonated, I think, with the whole focus group as well and also everyone that was having that discussion, so.
Christine: We hope that this adds to cultural narratives, you know, in a really positive way. You know, campaigns like this really challenge the stereotypes of what disability ads can look like. It’s fun, it’s brand aligned, and yet it’s really still genuinely grounded in consumer truth. So adding to the cultural narrative. Secondly, there’s this accessibility layer to it, that this showcases a new way of doing advertising that is more inclusive by design. So you know, this particular ad is able to be appreciated just with the sound. So if you turn the visuals off, you’ll still get the content and not miss out on the fun. You can have it just with the visuals and with no sound, you’re still going to get the content and not miss out on the fun. And to me, you know, that’s one of the real joys of this ad.
Annabel: I think it’s so important to make sure that accessibility is considered right from the beginning. So when you’re working on the initial concept and working with a disability partner from the get-go like we did with Open Inclusion to really make sure that you’ve got the relevant insights built into that creative process. I also think it’s really important to remain true to brand characteristics and values. So for example, for Currys, we used humor in a really playful way in our “Sigh of Relief” campaign, as that’s really fundamental to the brand tone of voice of Currys, and we didn’t take a different approach to the brief.
It was a classically funny Currys ad that had a resonant insight about disabled experience at its core. So I think for them it felt like the right time to enter the Channel 4 award and create an advert that is truly inclusive by design, and particularly as they continue to develop their accessibility and inclusion initiatives. For example, they’ve got quiet hours in store, they’ve partnered with the Sunflower scheme. So they’re already making quite a bit of progress in that space, and it really felt like the right time for them to enter this award. And I think that by showing you can create inclusive work that’s both in keeping with an existing brand platform and tone of voice, I really hope the campaign inspires other brands and agencies to consider their approach to accessibility. Because whilst we approached this brief like we do for any other Currys campaigns through that sort of humorous, hyperbolic world beyond expectations, I hope other brands feel encouraged to broaden their tone around advertising that promotes diversity and inclusion. I mean, it certainly opened me up to new ways of thinking, and I hope the same applies to everyone else who’s seen that campaign, just making one meaningful step towards creating more inclusive and authentic advertising will hopefully create more discussion and more of a positive impact.
Christine: Engaging more deeply, you know, really allows you to learn more deeply, so that genuine consultation, as opposed to really performative, you know, one-offs, but actually ongoing collaboration throughout a process is really important. And get a guide, someone who can really help you navigate across the process or two or three, you know, and let them harness the community in ways that best suit, because not everyone knows how to bring the community in in a way that is really accessible and inclusive of the whole community.
The other thing is allow that to confidently push you further forward within your brand. And I think what Annabel was just sharing in terms of Currys really caring about the customer experience and then doing the advertising and caring about progressing the customer experience. And then sharing more about this—these two things need to go together. If the experience goes ahead of the communication, nobody knows the work that you’ve done. If the communication goes ahead of the experience, you know you’re sharing something that’s not a real experience, so it does need to develop together.
I think the last point here is building an ad campaign is both expensive and time-consuming. Missing somewhere around a quarter of your audience is really inefficient. You know, it’s a really significant market, let alone thinking about the person who’s just gone to get a cup of tea and is listening to the ad but not watching it, who will also benefit from this sort of advertising. So authentic representation and accessible ads are really just smarter advertising.
