STAMMA, the U.K. charity representing people who stammer, has partnered with Iris London to launch “Don’t Hang Up. Hang On,” a powerful campaign encouraging patience and understanding when speaking to people who stammer.
The push, which went live on International Stammering Awareness Day (10/22), shines a light on an everyday situation that can feel anything but easy for the one in one hundred people in the U.K. who stammer: answering or making phone calls. It aims to raise awareness and promote acceptance of stammering while urging U.K. businesses to implement basic training and system changes to ensure that every call with a person who stammers is accessible and respectful.
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 U.K. stammer–which, according to Contact Babel, the analyst firm for the contact center 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 organization 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.
At the heart of the campaign is this hero film directed by Joseph Mann at Blinkink. It 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 visualizes the expectation that he’s 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 realizes what’s happening and pauses to give James time, the hand disappears.
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.
Menno Kluin, global chief creative officer at Iris, said, “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 behavior–and that’s where creativity has real power.”
