TBWA’s Media Arts Lab has been moving beyond Timberlake-and-Fallon-compare-their-phones spots of late with the Siri vs. Cookie Monster effort and the other recent ad in which Alison Brie and Jaime Lannister made some awkward attempts to hook up.
Over the weekend, MAL addressed a far more emotionally and medically complex matter: autism. The shop’s spot for Autism Acceptance Day introduces us to Dillan, a non-verbal young man who has learned to communicate with the world at large with help from some products made by a certain very prominent tech company.
That’s a pretty effective way to demonstrate the emotional returns on one Apple product.
The campaign also illustrates the day-to-day challenges faced by autistic individuals and their families, with the following short “Dillan’s Path” doing so from the perspectives of this young man’s mother and his therapist. As Dillan’s mom puts it eloquently, “Not being able to speak is not the same as not having something to say.”
From Dillan himself: “Without a voice, people only see my autism and not the real me.”
April is officially Autism Awareness Month, and the event is necessary because the condition remains a source of controversy, political infighting and personal conflict. If anything, related arguments have grown more heated in recent years.
Just ask Robert DeNiro.