Big W, Bupa and Thinkerbell have taken out Inclusive Awards at Inclusively Made’s annual foundation partners roundtable.
Big W was awarded Inclusive Brand of the Year, Thinkerbell was crowned Inclusive Agency of the Year and Bupa achieved Most Equitable Campaign of 2025 for their Inclusively Made certified Health Stories campaign.
In 2025, Big W had nine Inclusively Made certified productions, creating 85 days of employment for people with a disability, contributing $67,000 in inclusive employment.
Bupa’s Health Stories campaign (below), via creative agency 2045, encourages Australians to share their personal health stories.
It is rooted on the insight that 68 per cent of people who shared health stories to someone outside of the medical profession reported improved mental wellbeing.
“As marketers and creatives, we all have a role to play in driving better representation of those with disabilities on our screens and we welcome all brands, agencies and production companies to lead with inclusive production. We want the ambitions of Inclusively Made to become the national standard,” Bupa Health Insurance GM of marketing Naomi Driver said.
Thinkerbell created nine days of inclusive employment, with all of its productions providing accessible documentation, locations and broadcast captions. The agency’s inclusive approach contributed $13,000 to inclusive employment outcomes.
Thinkerbell co-founder and chief creative officer Jim Ingram said that over the past two years the agency has been on “a journey of imperfection but steadfast intent”.
“We’ve not got it right the whole way, but now (inclusivity) is a common conversation. Inclusively Made has given us the confidence to willingly ask questions, to get it wrong and be okay with that,” he said.
“The future is trying to make that just business as usual. It’s not a check box. It’s not a thing we’re trying to do to achieve any certification, even though you help us be certified to do it. But we want to just make our thinkers and our tinkers and our squads to just do this so that it becomes second nature.”
New partners & research
In 2025, the Inclusively Made community had 67 Inclusively Made certified productions, with 93 per cent of productions casting talent with disability in front of camera, and 943 days of employment behind the camera for people with disability in mentee and crew roles. The full economic impact totals over $500,000 in employment for people with disability.
The plan is to grow the number of Inclusively Made certified productions and employment opportunities for people with disability.
Inclusively Made added five additions to its foundation partners: KFC, Mastercard and Stan, as well as media agency Atomic 212 and production agency Entertainment Partners.
They join the company of Nine, Woolworths, BIG W, Bupa, Telstra and Thinkerbell in pledging their commitment to creating tangible change towards authentic disability inclusion in marketing and production.
Inclusively Made has also formed a partnership with Media Federation Australia (MFA) to work with the MFA’s DE&I Council to develop support for Australia’s leading media agencies.
The organisation released headline findings from Inclusively Made’s 2026 Inclusion Imperative Report, which will be released in January 2026.
In the report, more than half of Australian audiences expressed clearly that authentic representation is a driver of brand trust (56 per cent) and purchase (53 per cent).
When brands get representation wrong, it negatively impacts the trust of the majority of Aussies (51 per cent).
The report also opened an opportunity for accessible advertising and content in media, as 80 per cent of respondents said that it’s important or very important that content in media is accessible.
Representation matters
Inclusively Made CEO Paul Nunnari told B&T that although he hasn’t observed a seismic shift in terms of the number of companies that are creating Inclusively Certified productions, what has markedly improved is the authenticity of casting and production teams.
“Up to five years ago the majority, around 60 per cent, of people cast in campaigns and productions portraying a person with a disability didn’t actually have a disability,” he said.
“The seismic shift has been that now this is the exception to the rule…people with disabilities are being featured in campaigns, which is awesome.”
“Representation is probably the most important part. When I was growing up as a kid with a disability, I never saw myself represented.”
Nunnari said that Nine’s coverage of the Paralympic Games is an example of best practices with more than 50 per cent of commentators with a disability.
“You want those young kids with disability to see themselves reflected, not only in the performances they see on TV, but in the people presenting those performances,” he said.
The cost of inaction
The major barrier for brands, agencies and media companies to become more inclusive in their productions are not knowing where to start, and fear of getting it wrong and not being tokenistic.
The other barrier is that some brands are concerned about the optics of running inclusive ads if they haven’t gotten their own house in order.
The Inclusively Made framework is designed to help brands overcome these barriers through eight pillars: inclusive concept development; inclusive casting; inclusive mentoring; inclusive crew roles; accessible documentation; accessible locations; safe & inclusive environment; and accessible broadcast.
An important starting point, which was also made at B&T’s recent Inclusivity With Impact event, is to make sure that all of the right people are in the room at the start of the creative process.
“Co-design, or inclusive concept development, is imperative and fundamental. If it’s going to be genuine and authentic, inclusivity has to be from the beginning. It makes so much difference,” Nunnari said.
“Globally, the accessible spend is $13 trillion. My message to marketers and the industry is can your brand afford not to be inclusive?
“On average, every person with a disability is represented by four people. Can a brand afford to lose one person? Maybe. But can they afford to lose four? Probably not.”
And also: Sara Shams: ‘Culture Only Shifts When We Move From Visibility To Voice, From Inclusion To Influence’
