Stamma, the UK charity representing people who stammer, is launching a new ad campaign encouraging patience and understanding when speaking to people who affected by the condition.
“Don’t Hang Up. Hang On” has been devised in partnership with Iris London and shines a light on an everyday situation that can feel anything but easy for the one in 100 people in the UK who stammer: answering or making phone calls.
It aims to raise awareness and promote acceptance of stammering while urging UK businesses to implement basic training and system changes to ensure that every call with a person who stammers is accessible and respectful.
At the heart of the campaign is a film directed by Joseph Mann at Blinkink that tells the story of James, a young man with a stammer who receives a routine call from his local garage.
As he starts to speak, the film visualises the expectation that he is going to be hung up on or rushed through the appearance of a gremlin-like hand, shot in-camera, reaching from his phone to torment him – a metaphor for the fear of how others might react, based on past negative experiences.
When the caller realises what is happening and pauses to give James time, the hand disappears.
Research by Stamma found that around 65% of calls to businesses made by people who stammer are mishandled, with callers often being rushed, interrupted or even hung up on.
At least 550,000 adults in the UK stammer – which, according to Contact Babel, the leading analyst firm for the contact centre industry, equates to more than 43.5 million calls made by adults who stammer every year.
For many, the hardest moments come right at the start of a call, when they are asked to provide ID information – often their most difficult words to say.
Unsuccessful calls to an organisation can have real consequences for the lives of people who stammer, meaning they might not be able to complete vital everyday tasks such as reporting a lost bank card or booking a GP appointment.
The message is clear: a moment’s patience can make all the difference. The film closes with the line “Don’t hang up. Hang on.”
The campaign was created with authenticity in mind. Louis, who plays the film’s hero, has a stammer himself, and the work was shared widely within the stammering community prior to launch to ensure the portrayal was sensitive to the experiences of people who stammer.
The film is running across cinema and online channels, supported by DOOH executions styled as dramatic movie posters, each reinforcing the campaign’s call to action and directing people to stamma.org/nightmares.
Iris has also created a prototype of the gremlin hand as a phone case to bring it to life as a tangible concept.
Stamma chief executive Jane Powell said: “We want this campaign to show the dread people who stammer feel when they’re expecting to be hung up on, talked over or failed by voice recognition systems that don’t recognise stammered speech – because that’s how they’ve been treated by businesses in the past. Repeatedly. We want to change that, and help businesses do better.”
Iris global chief creative officer Menno Kluin added: “Misunderstanding fuels exclusion. We wanted to help Stamma make the invisible visible, showing the reality that people who stammer experience and dread: getting hung up on. ‘Don’t Hang Up. Hang On’ is proof that empathy moves behaviour – and that’s where creativity has real power.”
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