Disabled Actors Playing a Greater Role in Advertising : Major Sponsors Find They’re Not a Handicap in Helping to Sell Products
At first blush, it looks like just another McDonald’s commercial set on an ivied college campus. String and reed instruments play a variation of the company’s theme in the background.
“Can’t you smell the sea air?” asks Tim, trying to lure Lisa away from her studies for a bicycle trip to the beach. It is not until he mentions that McDonald’s is on the way that she relents. “Tim,” says Lisa, “you have a way with words.”
All their words, however, are in sign language. Both actors are deaf, and the average viewer must read captions to follow along.
“I saw it, and I ran to my mother and said, ‘Look at this advertisement, look at this advertisement,’ ” recalled Denise Gregory, 17, of Sierra Vista, Ariz., her words relayed through an interpreter.
To the delight of Denise, who is deaf, millions of Americans who saw the commercial, known as “Silent Persuasion,” were seeing that deaf people lead active, vital lives. And more and more often, the nation’s disabled are being seen that way, not just on telethons and late-night public service ads but through the high-production, high-stakes world of television commercials.
In the past 18 months or so, an increasing number of advertisers have included the handicapped in their commercials. Chrysler used an elderly man on crutches to deliver a testimonial for the convenience of its Plymouth Voyager van.
Aetna Life & Casualty recreated the rehabilitation of a truck driver who lost an arm, and Ralston-Purina included a Seeing Eye dog and his master among scenes of pets contributing to the lives of their owners.
Nuprin pain reliever was pitched in a simulated classroom by a teacher of deaf children who communicated in sign language all day.
Playful Mood in Ad
Just before the Olympics in 1984, Levi Strauss began what has become a $70-million ad campaign for its “501” jeans. In one of the first series of ads, viewers catch a glimpse of a man in a wheelchair accompanying a woman along a boardwalk. In the campaign’s distinctively playful mood, the man “pops a wheelie,” throwing the woman off her gait.
That campaign has also included two buddies coming toward the camera on a foggy street. One fellow on foot has to pick up the pace to keep up with his pal on wheels.
And in a third, Levi’s featured a pretty young woman in a wheelchair laughing with a young man hunkered down next to her.
In none of the Levi’s ads was the disabled person the focus of the commercial. Each was simply included along with the company’s typical cast of hip, young, urban characters having a blast in their “501” jeans.
Casting performers with disabilities is an important trend, observed Shailendra Ghorpade, a marketing researcher at Shearson Lehman Bros. in New York, because advertising “has a very big role to play in setting social norms.”
“We always took a cautious position because either we were afraid we would portray them incorrectly or that people would say we were using them to sell hamburgers,” said Robert Lins, creative director for McDonald’s. “But we talked to people, and people said: ‘Why don’t you give it a try?’ ”
Reflect the Trend
While no studies have been done on the subject, entries for an annual award for commercials using actors with disabilities have been steadily on the increase during the past five seasons. The Los Angeles-based Media Access Office reported that there were no entries for the award for the 1982-83 season, compared to seven entries for the 1985-86 season. Though the number of entries do not necessarily represent every commercial with a disabled actor, they are thought to be an accurate reflection of what is on television, since advertisers generally want some kind of recognition for the efforts they make.
Many scholars fear that TV advertising “takes the world as it is and makes it more so,” said Richard W. Pollay, professor of marketing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. That fear is cause for concern to many groups that represent the disabled.
“A telethon raises money and pity but does nothing to help the image,” said Jenny Caro, a spokeswoman for the National Challenge Committee on Disability, a nonprofit public awareness group based in Washington. “We’ve got to change the public’s opinion.”
Giving disabled individuals more roles in general-interest commercials and TV programming, many believe, helps widen viewers’ perceptions instead of reinforcing stereotypes.
“You have to have people with disabilities next to you so that that person becomes ‘Juanita,’ or ‘Joe’--not ‘that deaf person,’ ” Muriel Strassler, director of public information for the National Assn. of the Deaf, said through an interpreter. “The more you see it, the more people become comfortable, accepting, equal.”
“Silent Persuasion” is a case in point.
“We want our commercials to be a slice of life,” said Lana Ehrsam. Hearing-impaired people are “just another group that enjoys McDonald’s.”
“We were surprised at the response,” said Dean Christon, a spokesman for Levi’s. The idea to include a disabled person came from within the company, Christon said, not from outside, though he added that organizations that represent the disabled were quite pleased with the ads.
“We didn’t think it would be a big deal. We really didn’t feel we were breaking new ground,” he said.
While direct pressure may not account for the involvement of disabled actors, some people do credit government intervention, notably the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, with creating the atmosphere that brought people with disabilities into commercials. The act provided for rules against discrimination and for the removal of physical barriers to people with disabilities.
“That law had done so much to put handicapped people in the mainstream,” said Strassler. “These people graduate from college, they go to work.”
The act “is like the Brown (vs. Board of Education) decision for handicapped people,” she said, comparing it to the Supreme Court decision that integrated public schools.
Yet many people concerned with the issue believe that more must be done. “You need integration, and we still don’t have it,” said Henry Holden, a Los Angeles actor who uses crutches as a result of having polio as a child.
Holden--who has appeared in several television programs--acknowledges that some advances have been made but wants more.
He said he would like to see more commercials that include a person in line to buy tickets or as one of a series of people who ask a bartender for a beer. And Holden would like to see the number of people with disabilities in commercials approach their ratio in society--about 17%.
Some companies justify their reluctance to non-traditional casting by noting that casting policies tend to reflect the demographics of the mainstream.
Advertisers “are just finding the lowest common denominator,” Pollay said. Thirty seconds, they say, is not enough time to communicate why one of the people in the ad was in a wheelchair.
Actors have been faced with statements along the lines of “we want to make money, and we need an image, and you don’t fit that image,” and explanations that to include a person on crutches in an ad for an airline would be “an intrusion that cannot be explained.”
Advertisers also worry that the sight of a disabled person advertising a product may have a negative effect on potential customers.
Katherine Diamond of the Screen Actors Guild spends a good deal of her time trying to encourage the use of performers with disabilities by lobbying casting directors. It is no easy task.
“They immediately conjure up the most grotesque image,” Diamond said. As co-chairwoman of the Performers With Disabilities Committee, composed of members of the three most prominent acting unions, she spends her time “breaking down the attitudinal barriers,” she said.
The obstacles facing disabled actors--or any people who do not represent white, male, middle-class America--do not surprise Pollay. The advertising industry is “very risk averse,” Pollay said.
Can Enhance Image
But some people believe that ads like “Silent Persuasion” actually enhance a company’s image. Some observers believe this--rather than an attempt to target a new market--may be the underlying reason for using casts including the disabled.
“It makes you feel good about a company,” Ghorpade said. “It makes you think McDonald’s cares.”
Video Storyboard Tests, a New York-based company that tests viewer response to commercials, reports that “Silent Persuasion” has been one of the more popular McDonald’s commercials during the past year.
Not all advertisers are likely to be swayed by such information, though, so industry observers advise that widespread change in casting policies isn’t likely to happen unless outside groups start actively lobbying.
Some groups already are making that effort.
The Performers With Disabilities Committee is one group that tries to encourage the use of disabled performers in roles that don’t require a specific type of character. The committee also wants to see actors with disabilities play characters with disabilities, instead of, for example, for a walking Raymond Burr to play “Ironsides” in a wheelchair.
The unions representing television and film actors are cooperating with the American Assn. of Advertising Agencies to produce a collection of sample commercials to be shown to advertisers and production people. The reel will attempt to show how ethnic minorities, and elderly and disabled actors, can be employed in effective, general-market ads.
There will be “some major changes” in the future, predicted Caro of the Challenge Committee. “The time is ripe.”
But Caro also believes that actors with very severe disabilities such as mental retardation or cerebral palsy have little chance of appearing on television screens.
“People generally aren’t afraid of the hearing-impaired,” Caro explained. She hopes that the positive response to ads like “Silent Persuasion” will prompt advertisers to broaden their casting policies.
Mary Leonard, a New York actress who appeared in her wheelchair in a Levi’s ad, is enthusiastic about a trend she sees developing toward increased use of performers with disabilities in commercials. Her experience on the New York stage is that she has had no problems communicating to an audience.
“People will quickly adjust to you as long as you adjust to them,” she said.
Companies are adjusting, as McDonald’s Lins indicates: “If we’ve learned anything, we’ve learned how to portray these people. They don’t just sit on the sidelines; they really participate.”
