This year 9,363 babies were born with Down syndrome, but none of these births were celebrated.Because when a baby with Down syndrome is born, the first words parents hear are “I’m sorry”. A hurtful comment that implies babies with Down syndrome should be pitied instead of celebrated as any newborn should be.The Canadian Down Syndrome Society (CDSS) had a mission: to stop people from saying “Sorry” when reacting to the birth of a baby with Down syndrome so parents never hear the word again.We knew the public didn’t realize that hurtful language can be hiding in the most well-meaning word. So to provoke this realization, we made “sorry” a bad word - showing that any off-colour, profanity-laden reaction is better than “Sorry.”Anything But Sorry is an integrated digital campaign, launched with a social video, “The S-Word”, featuring people with Down syndrome who offer humorously inappropriate suggestions to welcome a baby with Down syndrome. The video debunks stereotypes of people with Down syndrome as struggling, unintelligent, and a “burden” just by showing them as the happy, confident, intelligent people they are, living lives that should be celebrated, not pitied.To increase our reach, we worked with the Down syndrome community to share the video broadly. And at the same time, we launched docu-stories of Down syndrome families affected by the word “Sorry”.We even targeted the top-30 YouTube videos containing the word sorry with the first-ever language warnings. Our ‘S Warnings’ featured our Down syndrome talent warning viewers of the ‘inappropriate’ language they were about to hear.Everything drove to a microsite where people shared more colourful welcomes that were “Anything But Sorry”. Every share welcomed one of the 9,363 Down syndrome babies born in North America this year.
