Alternative title: The R word
Media: Interactive
Category: Public interest
URL: http://therword.com.au
Client: Avivo
Agency: Marketforce
Country: Australia
Developer: David Thomas
Executive Creative Director: Pat Lennox
Creative Director: Ben Green
Art Director: Neil Martin
Creative Group Head/ Copywriter: Joe Hawkins
Digital creative: Chris Andrawes
Digital creative: Ben Derham
DoP: Lenny Rudeberg
Account Director: Jo Gibb
Agency Producer: Claire Baronas
Strategy Director: Nicole Cikarela
Account manager: Ruby Broun
Client CEO - Rosie Lawn
Published: Jabuary 2018
Synopsis:
The word retard appears on Twitter every 5 seconds. And it's used all over social media, film and television. Yet the word is offensive, not just to people with disability, but to their friends, families and carers. To raise awareness about the effect the word has, Marketforce created a Twitter bot to detect any English language use of the word 'Retard' or 'Retarded'. Then the bot automatically replies with a single Tweet - a video message from someone affected by the R word, talking directly to the person who just used it. In addition to programming the bot to recognise specific words from English language accounts, we also had to create an algorithm within the bot to contend with Twitter's daily tweet limits, ensuring that it complied with the platform's user requirements.