Here is a little heartwarming social media win for the holidays. (Hat tip to Lanie Sewell for sharing this with me.)
OskKosh B’gosh hired an agency to get talent for their holiday ad sets. Seems pretty innocuous, right? The Nash family went to audition their child for the part. One of the unique things about the Nash family is that their son, Asher, has down syndrome.
The Nash family found out later that Asher was not selected for the shoot and reportedly was told that the agency was not told to look specifically for children with special needs. Ouch.
A facebook group called, Kids with Down Syndrome, caught wind of this and shared a post talking about Asher’s rejection and it went viral. 120k shares and 104k reactions on Facebook.
Now to be clear and the Nash family pointed this out as well, it was not OshKosh rejecting the child it was the modeling agency. But OshKosh was still probably going to take the brunt of this as well because they are the big name associated with the story.
This shows the power of social media to connect people. In years passed a family would have just had to deal with the rejection and possibly have a small pool of support in their immediate family and community. In the social media era, 120 thousand people who are about this can get together and work for change
What was headed to be a social media loss for OskKosh turned into a win. OskKosh reached out to the Nash family and worked out a deal to feature Asher in their holiday campaigns. How great! They got a second round of press attention for featuring Asher and their post with him on facebook has been at least 5 times as popular as the average post on their page.
This is also a win for humanity. Featuring children with conditions like Asher in media like this can help to show the world that Asher is just another kid with a big smile and hopes and dreams. I hope we can see more of his smiling face in future OskKosh campaigns!
