Castle

Castle believes in a world where every person is able to contribute to society.

Almost half of the staff at Castle live with a recognised disability. Over the years, the organisation has developed trust and connection with local businesses in the Hunter region and garnered a great reputation with the people they have helped or collaborated with.

In an ever-difficult landscape within the NDIS and disability employment sectors, Castle needed to re-communicate who they were and why they existed, to reintroduce themselves to members of the community.

To build on Castle’s reputation and their drive to help people with a disability contribute to society and improve their lives. To communicate why they exist to the disability, business and wider community.

Businesses looking to employ people within the region and open minded to consider looking at non traditional methods of employment and those looking for work or NDIS services in our region.

Helping people prepare for, find and keep a job.

‘Castle look like they are doing great work in the community.’

‘I know / I am someone who Castle might be able to help.’

To fully explain the Castle story we created a communication campaign that had three parts. The first part was designed to communicate loud and proud that every single person is unique and appeal to a younger audience.

Traditionally those marketing a disability service provider have focused on producing imagery of happy and smiling participants, usually those with a physical disability that can be easily portrayed in a photograph or in a video. Because Castle recognises and helps everyone regardless of the type of disability they have or stage of life they are in, the visuals for the campaign needed to relate to everyone and not alienate any one group of individuals.
To achieve this we chose to use illustration, we created a series of diverse characters, each with their own personality and story. They were used in combination with the new tagline, ‘Embrace your otherness’ which was developed specifically to communicate loud and proud that every single person on this planet is unique.

The second part of the campaign utilsed imagery and video content through the creation of a video series called ‘Dare to Ask’ where a number of employees, participants and employer partners were asked about their life experience and answer questions people may be too afraid to ask them in person. This has been subsequently distributed as long-form content across their blog and YouTube, and in short-form across Instagram and TikTok.

For the third part of the campaign, we developed a podcast series with the tagline title ‘Embrace your otherness’ where the CEO of Castle, Brad Webb, interviews participants, employees or key members of our community in Australia and gains insights into the industry, challenges people to face on their day to day and ideas for the future.The website was completely redesigned and rebuilt from scratch with a focus on search engine optimisation (SEO) and usability. We used the software UserWay throughout the site for world-class disability support of the interface and website content for those with various challenges using traditionally non-optimised websites.

Finally, we developed a series of hoodies and promotional materials that could be taken to expos and proudly worn by Castle participants.

Over the first 12 months of relaunching, we doubled website traffic and engagement across the websites content. We also increased enquiries substantially, around 200%, and developed process pipelines and systems with their customer-facing teams to ensure all enquiries were being helped in the most impactful way. Further to this, we were able to calculate around a 6 to 1 return on their investment ensuring everything that was being spent with our agency was not only driving great outcomes for their participants but ensuring the organisation was generating the revenue they needed to provide the services they offer their participants. Castle are a not-for-profit but this also means they are a not-for-loss and need to be equally if not more diligent than those in the private sector.