Spanish organisation Confederación ASPACE has brought the World’s attention to the fact that sexuality isn’t just for people without disabilities.

The goal of their successful campaign – #MiraDeFrente – was to make people take notice of the need for people with CP to feel affection and explore their sexuality.

This was the awareness campaign you had no chance of looking away from.

Mira de Frente means ‘don’t look at the other side’ in English. The confronting, and yet magical music video at the heart of the campaign made certain that everyone was looking.

Starring Spanish music group, Ravioli Makers, the video makes it abundantly clear to any who watches, that having CP does not mean you don’t have the same feelings or desires as anyone else.

The emphasis is also spot on: people with CP have as much right to those feelings and desires as anyone else, and they have the same rights to act on them.

The project

Confederación ASPACE’s communications team, Ismael Nuñez Miralles and Marta Cadahía de Heredia say that they wanted this campaign to draw society’s attention to the sexuality and affection needs of with CP so they can have improved quality of life.

They put together a communication and social media plan to develop their presence in the media, go viral with the video clip, and turn the hashtag #MiraDeFrente into one of the nation’s trending social media topics by 4 October 2018. This coincided with World Cerebral Palsy Day.

Campaign organisers reached out to more than 400 influencers, artists, politicians, organisations and media for help raising the #MiraDeFrente campaign profile.

Both national and regional television stations worked with ASPACE Madrid to give airplay to a 20 second cut of video clip, which runs for 4 minutes and 24 seconds at full-length.

With the help of funding from the Spanish Health Ministry, ASPACE were able to hit the mark on their awareness goals across Spain.

Run in two phases, the campaign began with the dissemination of the video clip on 17 September 2018.

The clip quickly went viral.

In the second phase, launched on 25 September 2018, they hit the jackpot!

#MiraDeFrente was the nation’s top trending Twitter topic.

More than 1800 people participated in the success of this Twitter event, writing more than 5600 tweets of support to people with CP.

Variations on the campaign creative were supported by famous Spaniards like actor Antonio Banderas and dancer Sara Baras.

The video reached more than 15 million people on Twitter and achieved more than 62,000 plays.

On Facebook, more than 165,000 were engaged.

“All of this is thanks to the collaboration of journalists, media outlets, influencers, sportsmen and women, singers, actors, organisations, politicians, companies, comedians, fashion and show personalities and TV influences like Alejandro Sanz, Morat, Alvaro Soler and Sara Baras,” says Confederación ASPACE’s Head of Communications, Ismael Nuñez Miralles.

The video was shown on two national channels (Atresmedia and Mediaset) during one week, and across regional media by six separate outlets on 6 October 2018.

Future plans

“This campaign fits with a global project about sexuality and affection for people with CP,” says Ismael

“We plan to continue the broader project which includes training sessions with a sexologist who focuses on people with CP, their families and professionals.”

The campaigners have also published a guide on the subject, a photographic exhibition and continue to broaden the exposure of the materials they’ve developed.

#MiraDeFrente won the Major Award for Public Awareness in the 2019 World Cerebral Palsy Day Awards.

To learn more about Confederación ASPACE, visit their website.