THE CHALLENGE

According to a recent poll with respondents from over 100 organizations, mispronunciation of names is the most common micro-aggression towards minorities in the UK.

Fear of speaking up leads to people with “unusual” names accepting the wrong pronunciation, taking on an anglicized name at work or letting people use an “easy” nickname instead of their real name.

During Race Equality Week 2022, an annual UK-wide movement to address the barriers to race equality in the workplace, Race Equality Matters wanted to highlight names, and the importance of pronouncing them correctly.

THE STRATEGY

To showcase what’s really in a name, and the importance of pronouncing them correctly, Race Equality Matters launched The Fuh-Net-Ic filter, a social tool that made it possible for anyone to share the phonetic spelling of their names, and the stories behind them.

Based on a database of over 500,000 names and with different phonetic spellings from over 70 countries and pronunciations in 22 languages, the Fuh-Net-Ic Filter made it possible to translate any name into phonetics and share it on social media.

Our goals were to make the issue visible by turning the pronunciation of names from something verbal into something visual, and to make it personal by sharing the stories behind names, whether it’s about the origin of their name or the moments where they’ve had it mispronounced.

THE EXECUTION

We launched the campaign on the opening day of Race Equality Week and targeted community members with names that are seen as “hard to pronounce” by the general population and invited them to try The Fuh-Net-Ic filter.

People immediately started to share the way to say their names, and the stories behind them. Additionally, we worked with traditional PR by pitching interesting stories about people who’ve had their names mispronounced.

What started as a filter to share the way to pronounce names, revealed thousands of stories about heritage, identity and pride. And proved that names are too important to mispronounce.

THE OUTCOME

During the weeks following the launch, over 55,000 people from all over the world shared stories about their name origin, their ancestors and their identity.

• The campaign generated 1.7 billion earned impressions
• 3,500 companies joined the campaign
• It earned widespread media coverage, including BBC, LadBible and LinkedIn News