Page 28 - ABILITY Magazine - Best Practices Employment

Once we had their input, I went to marketing and said, “Here’s an idea that the employee network EnAble is exploring. Tell me what your advice and counsel would be.” And they gave us some great advice about focus- groups studies and achieving authenticity and things like that. So we did focus groups and asked maybe 10 or 12 questions to get feedback. Nearly all the survey responses we got were incredibly positive, with less than three percent coming back with anything negative.
Cooper: Those were probably the people who fell asleep during the focus group.
Broussard: (laughs) So then my senior executive allowed me to go forward with the demo. I hired a local video production company to do it, and we used all Pep- siCo employees. The hardest part was convincing my wife to let me use our house.
Cooper: Was that your house in the commercial?
Broussard: No, we only used it in the demo, which was a bit different. In that version, we started inside a house and showed them watching a game. After we shot the demo, my senior executive presented it to the senior executive level team, and there was immediate enthusi- asm. They green-lighted the project and said, “We want to fast-track this to the Super Bowl and give it as broad an audience as we can.”
Cooper: And the rest is history... So what’s next for you?
Broussard: I’ve been asked, “Are there follow-up con- cepts?” There are a couple of concepts we’re consider- ing. I’m still a little new to the mysteries of marketing. I
don’t know how those things get determined. But we’ve got ideas to contribute.
Cooper: So those ideas will be sent up the flagpole the way you did before?
Broussard: Yeah, and I think marketing will determine if it’s something we want to pursue. But in the mean- time, the Super Bowl ad is getting distributed over the Internet, which has really been huge. While the Super Bowl attracted 90 million households, what’s interest- ing is that when content on the Internet goes “viral”- millions upon millions of people forwarding it along to friends and coworkers-it can potentially reach even more people.
The reception the ad received on the Internet was tremendous, beyond anything I would have conceived of, and it quickly went to, like, number three on YouTube. I’ve been told that of the 90 million viewers who watched in on TV, one in 10 households had some- body deaf or hard of hearing in the household.
Cooper: I think there are roughly 28 million people that are deaf or hard-of-hearing.
Broussard: It struck me what a large percentage of the community would identify with the ad. We wanted to tell a story that featured diversity and inclusion in a way that would appeal to a broad audience and in a way that was humorous.
Cooper: I think humor is a common denominator.
Broussard: On the business end, we figured: “This has a classic element of typical PepsiCo advertising: fun, humor and a good product.”
Cooper: What other activities are you working on?
Broussard: There are some things that I’m working on. We had a large company reach out to us after the ad was shown, saying, “We’re interested in talking about accessibility awareness, would PepsiCo consider working with us on that?” So that’s something we’re discussing now.
Cooper: That’s interesting, that you might provide awareness training to other companies.
Broussard: I’m currently working with the Dallas May- or’s Committee for the Employment of Persons with Disabilities-a forum of businesses in the Dallas metro- plex - to determine how to create awareness of this topic inside our community. Last year we sponsored a break- fast for local area HR people on the topic of “onboard- ing” persons of different abilities. There are other things I’m working on, but can’t talk about yet.
The chapter of EnAble that I’m with had a kickoff