Campaigner changes national brand’s policy
ACAMPAIGNER for Special Educational Needs awareness in North Devon has interviewed a head of a multinational company, after speaking out against one of their adverts.
Dental brand Colgate came under fire from members of the Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) community, after featured teacher Nils Wengler was captioned as an ‘art teacher for troubled children’.
Duncan Casburn, from Bishop’s Nympton, has been active in the community for three years, after his daughter was diagnosed with autism. He posted a video on the topic on his YouTube channel, PDA Dad UK: Understand Autism and PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance), after seeing the advert on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
Duncan said: “Autism is a different way of viewing the world. It’s just the way that the brain processes the world around you is different, and the interpretations and the output are different – and so to be labelled as troubled was a bad, bad way of phrasing it.
“There were a lot of people who were jumping on it, saying this is wrong, so I very quickly put that video together and just said: ‘Look, I actually think you’re doing a good thing and I think your hearts in the right place, but there’s a problem’.”
Less than a week later, Duncan was contacted by an employee from Colgate via Twitter, stating that the advert had been taken down and apologising for the error. The advert has now been republished, omitting the phrase.
Duncan was also invited to hold a 30-minute interview with Patricia Verduin, Colgate’s head of research and development. Within the interview, Mrs Verduin shares information about the aims of the advert, as well as the Colgate Ability Network.
In the video, Mrs Verduin said the interview will be circulated to all Colgate branches in the world to prevent the mistake from happening again. She said: “Our marketing team will share this around the globe and say ‘this is what you don’t do’, so we can learn from it. I can’t promise there won’t be a hiccup in Singapore but the chances of that will be a lot less having had this experience and what I consider a great learning opportunity.
“The second thing we’ll do, and we’re already doing this, is think about design of our products a little bit more holistically. We can impact the oral health of many more disabilities than we ever thought.”
The SEND community has not always received such a positive response to criticism. Duncan compared Colgate’s response to that of the singer Sia, who openly defended her film ‘Music’ after receiving criticism of her portrayal of autism and the use of restraint.
Duncan said: “The difference here is, within 48 hours, they changed the ad and had taken it off TV, and they actually listened and responded – and then, when they reached out to me and said ‘we’d like to talk to you’, I was really surprised.
“I really hope other corporations or big businesses see this and take note on how to handle a response like this, because you can go the Sia route and just tell everyone to shut up, and that’s it, or you can take the Colgate route, which is to say: ‘We’re sorry, we’ve really made a faux pas here, we made a mistake.’
“I think Colgate have turned this mistake into a positive, and have learnt more than if they hadn’t have made the mistake at all.”
Duncan started being active with the SEND community when he set up the UK Autism Spectrum Parents Support group three years ago. After receiving many of the same questions from members of the SEND community, Duncan created his YouTube channel to relay information and offer support directly.
Duncan is also part of the Grumpy Dads podcast with fellow host Chris Leasmith, which features interviews with members of the SEND community, as well as the Grumpy Gits podcast with TV presenter Adam Pearson and journalist Simon Samson.
Duncan said there is still a stigmatisation on the SEND community in the media and said everyone has the responsibility to end it. He said: “People have a real misconception when they hear about neurodiversity like autism, and the trouble is we’ve had the movie references of Rain Man, and now Sia’s music, which is so inaccurate.
“They display one element of autism, but not the whole thing. All that kind of stuff gives you a boxedin perception of what autism is, and what neurodiversity in general is.
“I think if you don’t speak up when you see something’s wrong, how can anything change? There’s a responsibility for all of us to be alert to things like this and to actually respond to do something about it.
“The results could be unexpected, and, in my case, it was a very pleasant surprise.”
‘I think if you don’t speak up when you see something’s wrong, how can anything change?