Access Israel: People Not Symbols

Credits & Description:

Brand: Access Israel
Agency: Leo Burnett Israel
Chief Executive Officer: Adam Polachek
Chief Creative Officer: Ami Alush
Chief Strategy Officer: Shai Nissenboim
Chief Account Officer: Idit Zukerman
Creative Concept: Mila Dayan, Chen Federing, Meital Miller
Account Supervisor: Inna Tubin
Account Executive: Ilana Peisakhin
Producer Manager: Simi Ben Zikri, Menny Zarhia
Graphic Team: Viki Bergman, Shlomi Amir, Elad Ziv
Strategic Planner: Liz Stull
Marcom: Eva Hasson
Published: April 2018
Synopsis:
You've probably seen it happen a zillion times and you've maybe even done it yourself once or twice. By that I mean park in a spot for disabled people.
Yeah, we've all seen it happen before: a car blitzing into a parking spot reserved for the disabled only for its driver to step out seconds later on two perfectly functioning legs. Sure, if you ask the driver he'll probably have a whole battery of excuses to go with his blatant misbehavior and disrespect. Anything ranging from: "I'll only be a second", "I'm just picking up my wife" to "What's the rush? You're sitting in a wheelchair anyway!" and our personal favorite: "I DIDN’T SEE THE SIGN".
Desperate for stricter enforcement of their rights, “Access Israel” decided to raise public awareness for the issue and to put a face on people with disabilities.
To do that we photographed disabled people including members of parliament, Paralympic medalists and celebrities and staged them to look exactly like the international symbol on disabled parking signs. The plan was to create a loud enough message politicians would no longer be able to ignore. And so, over the space of 1 night, we replaced thousands of disabled parking signs in over 17 Israeli cities with a real person's picture.
The outcome? Our message reached the antechambers of the Israeli parliament where the issue finally made it to the public agenda with the parliament pledging to modify the law by the end of 2018 by increasing the fine for parking violators by 100%.
In addition, 2 of Europe’s largest accessibility organizations are about to launch their own version of our campaign.