‘I don’t need fixing’. This powerful insight forms part of an impactful campaign from the British Stammering Association from VMLY&R, which successfully challenges the public’s perception of stammering.

The ‘It’s how we talk’ campaign highlights the many misconceptions, stereotypes and downright cruelty experienced by people who stammer. 

Between 50-70 million people around the world stammer, including Joe Biden, President of the USA. 8% of children will stammer at some point in their lives, and between 1-3% of adults say that they stammer. 

Yet in the media, stammering is rarely heard and when it is, the person’s stammer is often portrayed in a negative light or to comedic effect. Authentic portrayal has been almost impossible to find, until now. 

"It is time to end the zero visibility of stammering. Until we hear and see people who stammer in the media, people will continue to respond inappropriately when they hear someone stammer. This is a legacy we can't leave our children," explained Jane Powell, CEO, STAMMA.

The campaign features 17 members of the UK stammering community, with outdoor advertising from portrait photographer David Vintiner, which is appearing across the JCDecaux network.

In addition Stamma has launched a petition to make stammering more visible and improve representation. The petition, which has launched on change.org, is aimed at eleven major media agencies and calls upon them to ensure that people who stammer are represented across all media channels.

In addition to the film, STAMMA has released a series of interviews asking people when was the first or last time they saw someone on TV who stammered, or when they saw someone on TV who wasn’t talking about their own stammer, making it the focus of the conversation. 

Over the next year, STAMMA will track how the media will include disfluent voices in their programming and what efforts they take to ensure that stammering is accounted for in all their recruitment and HR policies.

If cynicism is the enemy of creativity then campaigns like this are a powerful and uplifting reminder of the power of creativity to positively change the narrative. A long-term commitment to change; with creativity at the core.