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                  12/19/91 -- (C) 1991 The Washington Post 
 
                        Retailers Reach to the Disabled
                    Stores See Profit in Underserved Market
                                By Candy Sagon
                         Washington Post Staff Writer
 
    In the mid-1970s, Sandra Gordon approached a Minneapolis company about
using a person with a disability in one of its promotional photographs.
 
    "They were horrified at the idea," the National Easter Seal Society
executive recalled. "They told me they would lose sales, it would scare
people - and they even used the word 'disgusting.' "
    Things have changed dramatically since then.
    Not only are a growing number of retailers using people with disabilities
in their advertisements and commercials, but industry analysts are calling
their decision a shrewd business move to attract new customers in a slow
economy.
    The trend isn't new this season - such companies as McDonald's Corp.,
Levi Strauss and Co., Nike Inc. and Du Pont Co. have featured people with
disabilities in their advertising campaigns for years - but now prominent
retail chains see this as a direct opportunity to increase sales as well as
enhance their image. Chains including Nordstrom, Kids R Us, Eddie Bauer,
Marshall Field's and Target are regularly featuring people with disabilities
in their sales catalogues and circulars, while K mart Corp.'s new television
commercials include shoppers in wheelchairs.
    "I'm sure there's some altruism behind this, but it's also good
business," said Gene Taper, retail partner with the accounting and consulting
firm Deloitte & Touche. "The disabled are a market and companies who corral
this market will have a competitive advantage."
    According to the recent census, there are 43 million Americans with
disabilities, and, as Gordon tells companies, "They have families, they have
funds and they buy stuff. This is a hot, new market."
    Many of the retailers who are using such ads say the publicity
surrounding the passage last year  of the Americans with Disabilities Act
caused them to rethink their campaigns. The law, which goes into effect next
month, will give people with disabilities equal access to virtually every
public space.
    "More disabled people will be shopping because (the law) will make stores
more accessible. Retailers are aware of this and want to encourage them to do
more," said Sid Doolittle, retail strategist with McMillan Doolittle, a
retail consulting firm based in Chicago.
    At Nordstrom Inc. corporate offices in Seattle, art director Cheryl
Zahniser said reading about the disabilities act made her realize "that
physically challenged people have to wear clothes too." She and her staff
chose children from a local school and included three of them - one in a
wheelchair, one using a walker and one with Down's syndrome - modeling
clothes in last summer's catalogue.
    When that generated a flurry of letters commending the store, the company
produced its holiday catalogue using three adults in wheelchairs as well as a
young boy with Down's. Even more customers wrote and called to praise the
photos.
    One of the calls came from Ann McClellan, a supervisor with the
Developmental Disabilities Center in Orange, Calif., who is disabled herself.
    McClellan praised Nordstrom for showing "physically challenged people as
a normal part of society."
    She also called it "a good marketing idea. We do spend money and
contribute to the economy as much as anyone else. Seeing this (the holiday
catalogue) gives me a good feeling and makes me more inclined to shop there."
    Kids R Us President Michael Searles also said using children with
disabilities in sales circulars produces a good feeling - not just in his
customers but among his own staff. "Doing this made everyone in the office
feel good in a year that hasn't been very good for retail."
    Both Kids R Us and Eddie Bauer, the outdoor clothing and equipment chain,
got interested in using people with disabilities in their catalogues because
of corporate sponsorship of various charities.
    Eddie Bauer, which is owned by Spiegel Inc., works closely with Easter
Seal camps and first featured a wheelchair Frisbee player in a 1989
catalogue. Kids R Us, which is owned by Toys R Us Inc., employees work with
the Institute for Child Development at the Hackensack Medical Center in New
Jersey, where the company is based, and children from the institute are often
used in their advertisements.
    Two of the biggest advertising campaigns to include people with
disabilities come from two discount chains: Target, owned by Dayton Hudson
Corp. of Minneapolis, and K mart.
    Target, whose sales circulars go to 30 million households in 32 states
from California to Michigan, has been using children with disabilities to
model clothing since July 1990 and has been honored by Easter Seals for its
efforts.
    Bob Thacker, Target's vice president for advertising, said the campaign
has generated more than 1,000 letters and has been "the single most
successful consumer response we've ever gotten."
    The ads also have been beneficial for sales, he noted. "We know the ads
sell merchandise. We've watched the numbers and sales are strong."
    The company's first circular included a photo of a girl in a wheelchair
wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt and giggling with a bunch of her friends.
Since then ads have shown children and teens with Down's syndrome, leg braces
and artificial limbs. An upcoming circular will feature a blind youngster
with a seeing eye dog.
      For K mart, the original idea to portray shoppers with disabilities in
its new television commercials came from its advertising agency, Calet,
Hirsch & Spector in New York City.
    "K mart had never done commercials showing people shopping so we were
trying to replicate all the groups who use the store," said executive
producer Frank DiSalvo. The commercials had been airing for six months last
year when DiSalvo visited a K mart store and realized that "the disabled
population was not being represented." The agency now runs 20 commercials a
month, four of which have wheelchair shoppers with speaking roles.
    "We wanted to portray them as just another shopper," explained DiSalvo. A
typical 30-second commercial shows a woman in a wheelchair shopping and
joking about her husband's cooking with a friend.
    Still, said Easter Seals' Gordon, many companies and ad agencies hesitate
to use models with disabilities in their ads.
    "A lot of ad agencies say they're afraid their client won't like it, the
customer will be turned off or they use the excuse that 'it's not right for
this product,' " she said.
    Even at Target, the idea of using such models was not unanimously
supported at first, admitted George Hite, vice president for public
relations. "Some buyers were worried that it would detract from the
merchandise. Others felt it would look exploitative."
    Gordon scoffed at this. "There isn't a single disabled person who will
say they feel they're being exploited." Instead, she said, they are thrilled
and proud that they are being portrayed as just another member of society.
    Eventually, Target's Thacker hopes, "wheelchairs and prosthetics will be
seen in the same way we see glasses."
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