The Shepherd Centre - 'Sound of Deafness'

The Shepherd Centre is a charity for deaf children. And contrary to popular belief, deaf people don’t hear silence; they hear a distorted, disturbing cacophony of sounds. Based on this insight, we produced a campaign to help ‘paint a picture’ of how severely deaf children experience the everyday things we take for granted. To help us create a genuine campaign, we used special sound mixing equipment that the staff at The Shepherd Centre use for their research. The sounds you will hear are actually close to those heard by deaf kids.

As well as making TV and radio ads, we produced a CD with several tracks that replicate what the world sounds like to a deaf child. The CDs, with track lists, were placed in listening posts in Musicstores where they sat alongside the latest releases. The packaging was designed to fit in with the music store environment.

The following is what the world sounds like to a deaf child.

The idea was the perfect fit for a powerful radio campaign.