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Listerine is going for an emotive approach with its latest campaign, unveiling a new app that helps blind people 'see' someone smiling at them.
The mouthwash brand has released an online film showing several blind and partially sighted consumers explain the social difficulty of not being able to read another’s expression.
They explain that to experience smiles (and other facial expressions), they will usually have to touch a person’s face.
The app, built by J Walter Thompson and approved by the RNIB, uses a smartphone’s camera and facial recognition to identify when someone might be smiling.
The phone will vibrate on detecting a smile, acting as a simple social signal. A blind person using the app can hold up their smartphone and detect a smile up to five metres away.
The ad, shot by filmmaker Lucy Walker, marks a notable departure from the usual ‘white lab coat’ style of advertising beloved of FMCG brands.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
