“Please Ignore It”: Tourette’s Association of NZ launches anti-awareness awareness campaign for Tourette’s Awareness Month via Saatchis NZ
Most awareness campaigns ask for your attention. This one is screaming for you to ignore it. To mark Tourette’s Awareness Month (15th May – 15th June), the Tourette’s Association of New Zealand (TANZ) has launched ‘Please Ignore It’ – a new campaign, developed by Saatchi & Saatchi NZ, that twists the convention of traditional awareness efforts. When it comes to Tourette’s, attention often makes things worse. And it was this simple insight led the creative team to such an unexpected theme.
“When someone has a tic, the last thing they want is more attention,” says Emma Henderson, TANZ General Manager. “Most people think of Tourette’s as the neurological disorder that makes people swear or shout profanities, which is a form of tic that only impacts 10% of people with Tourette’s. So, when they meet or see someone with other types of tics, they’re often caught off guard and unsure how to respond. What they don’t realise is that drawing focus to the tic – whether through staring, pointing it out awkwardly, or falling into awkward silences – can actually increase that person’s stress, making their tics even more frequent or pronounced. That’s why we’re giving people one simple piece of advice: please ignore it.”
Despite 1 in 100 young Kiwi’s experiencing tics or Tourette’s, the syndrome is not considered a disability in New Zealand, meaning it gets zero government funding. Relying solely on grants and donations, the campaign urges New Zealanders to pay cash, not pay attention.
Says Jordan Sky, Executive Creative Director at Saatchi & Saatchi NZ: “People with Tourette’s get unwanted attention 12 months of the year. We wanted to draw attention to the fact they’d rather not be drawing your attention.”
“The reactions can be worse than the tics,” says Henderson. “What many people don’t realise is that the staring, laughing, even awkward silences are far more distressing than the condition itself. This campaign helps normalise Tourette’s in a way that’s empowering, not patronising.”
“It’s great when the creative answer to a brief is right there in the brief,” says Steve Cochran, Chief Creative Officer at Saatchi & Saatchi NZ. “Knowing people with a tic would prefer us just to ignore it became the campaign idea. An ad asking you to ignore it means you can’t help but pay attention. This irony makes the message all the more potent, helping educate people about Tourette’s and how to behave around it.”
That tension between asking to be ignored and being impossible to ignore extends into the campaign’s visual language. The campaign’s design reflects the unpredictable, disruptive nature of Tourette’s itself. Designed in intentionally loud, brash colours, the bold, angular typography takes cues from the jagged pulse-like burst patterns of an EEG brainwave – evoking the neurological activity behind a tic. The resulting design makes the ‘PLEASE IGNORE IT’ message feel frenetic as though shifting in volume and intensity, mirroring the involuntary motor and vocal tics that define the condition.
Thanks to TANZ’s media partners – NZME, Mediaworks, LUMO, Go Media, Stuff, oOh! Media and Phantom Billstickers – the ‘Please Ignore It’ campaign will run from May 15th – June 15th across radio, digital, outdoor and social – assuming, of course, you pay attention.
Tourette’s Association of New Zealand General Manager: Emma Henderson
Creative Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi NZ
Chief Executive Officer: Mark Cochrane
Chief Creative Officer: Steve Cochran
Executive Creative Director: Jordan Sky
Art Director: Milla Mihaljevich
Copywriter: Lane Pilkington
Strategy Director: Brendan Greenwell
Design Director: Shiv Narandas
Intermediate Designer: Laura Cooper
Digital Designer: Nelson Rayner
Junior Designers: Talia Schofield, Logan Walsh
Senior Business Director: Camille Coltman
Business Manager: Frances Nadan
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It’s a Tough Gig
Who would have thought an affinity with horses.
It was a sunny day in October 2013, my kids and I had been down at Foxton beach for the day, my wife Wendy and I, my 16-year-old daughter Sarah, and my 14-year-old son Tim had been down the beach for the afternoon. We had recently moved from Foxton Beach into town and had some close friends in Foxton that we kept up with.
My sons Tim’s, Tourette’s were particularly bad after an exciting day at the beach, excitement seem to always ramp up Tim’s ticks. We were driving past the local horse training stables and out of the blue Tim asked if we could stop at some of the horse trainers’ stables to see if we could arrange some work experience. Evidently the school had requested this from the kids to arrange several weeks ago.
As normal Tim hadn’t mentioned this, school was not Tim’s strong point, in fact it was amazing that he was still at Fryberg given some of the stupid shit he had done that somehow, he had got away with. This was probably something to do with his young boyish good looks and the sympathy that he was able to play on. Having Tourette’s syndrome whilst being terrible illness was a novelty and happened to have a profile at the time because of various tv programs and other media reports on this unfortunate condition.
For the many people that don’t know or haven’t heard about TS it’s when a person has absolutely no control over their body, vocal comments or noises that they make, but the one big thing that people don’t get is the involuntary reaction of their minds. This is one of the unknown facts about TS and to be honest probably worse than the others albeit the voice, body and noises are transparent the activity of the mind is not.
Anyway I said to Tim, No it’s been a long day and we’re heading straight home, on our arrival home Tim grabbed the phone book at proceeded to look up horse trainers, Tim had never seen a horse in the flesh but as I’d followed the horses mostly down the gurgler on a Saturday afternoon he reckoned that this would be better than school once day week so he started going through the phone book, the first person he rang was A Mr. Mark Oulaghan, Tim didn’t know Mark from a bar of soap but he rang him and Mark said sure come down next Saturday, and we’ll get you to do a bit of work for us as job experience.
And that was the beginning of Tim’s journey in the racing industry that saw him ending up becoming a successful apprentice jockey in the New Zealand world of thoroughbred horse racing and going on to ride 70 plus winners before his weight caught up with him and wasting was just too difficult.
Learning about Tim’s Tourette’s
Wendy and I had four children, all who were probably normal in the scheme of things. We were living in Palmy North and Tim was our youngest, I think maybe 4 and we were living in Ferguson Street. I remember it being a quiet night sitting in the lounge and casting my eye over to Tim, and he seemed to be in some sort of trance, and I went to him and asked him if he was ok, there was no response at all, his eyes rolled back, and they never moved. I had never been so scared in my life; I was yelling at Tim but there was no reaction. I lifted him up and he was like a rag dole, conscious but no reaction or movement of his body at all. Wendy and I were in in absolute panic as we were convinced our son was dying, we jumped into the car and bolted to A&E absolutely terrified at what the hell was happening with our son.
We reached A&E, and they rushed Tim in as it seemed his brain was not reacting to anything, we were convinced that Tim was either going to die or was going to be severely brain damaged and I don’t know
about Wendy but I was calling on every ounce of my religious upbringing that I had to try and convince God or whoever not to take my son.
I’m not sure whether my convenient return to Religion belief made a difference, but about 2.00am in the morning Tim starting showing some signs that he was coming back from wherever he had been, his eyes had rolled back into place and he was reacting to our movements and encouragement and by the morning Tim was totally responding again, I had never been so relieved in my life, and along with Wendy we were the two most happiest parents alive.
No one was really sure what happened that night and it never happened again but what did happen is that Tim started making some random vocal noises, which was strange. He would make strange movements with his face which we would comment on that he
seemed to have no idea what he was doing. This went on for Six months or so before we took him to our local doctor, Dr. Trevor Parry, who not only delivered Tim, but 20 years latter would provide Tim’s 70th Raceday win as a jockey, but more about that later.
To be honest Dr Trevor Parry had no idea, he is a specialist in delivering babies and whilst he was our GP I doubt had even heard of Tourette’s Syndrome, (TS) but what he did do was pass him on to a specialist by the name of Dr. Gilles Bates.
Mr. Bates is a pediatrician, not a TS specialist but he had heard of TS and promptly diagnosed Tim of this illness and stated basically there was no cure and whilst medication might ease the anxiousness of having the disease realistically there was nothing that could be done. Tim would have it for his whole life and he would have to learn to live with it.
Living with TS
My most vivid and emotional understanding of what our son had to live with was when Tim was about 5 years old and he had developed a particularly painful “tick,” this is the term for an involuntary body movement, noise, or mind repetition caused by TS. This Tick was causing him to continually bite his tongue, I would lie in bed with my 5-year-old boy trying to tell him to try and stop doing it, a comment that would only make him do it more severely. His tongue would be cut to shreds, and he would be in agony as his body continued to tick, and he would continue to bite his tongue. I’m not sure how many times we ended up crying ourselves to sleep, Tim through the pain and me through the ripped emotion that I could do nothing for my son except lie there and try and comfort him with cuddles, an exercise that quite frankly seemed futile most of the time.
Tim started at school like any other kid, there were so many kids so much worse off than Tim and this was the line I would constantly use and it was absolutely true, Tim’s condition wasn’t life threatening, he would still be able to live a reasonably normal life once he had explained his illness to the people around him and good people would understand is what I would say. What I didn’t say was bad people wouldn’t.
Tim coped a bit as a young kid but really that’s what’s kids do, it didn’t really faze Tim, and he certainly learnt to give as much as he got. He became a bit of a tough nut as his defense mechanisms clicked in whenever he was teased.
He started to get very close to the kids that would protect him which just happened to be the tougher kids. Tim wasn’t the greatest student, his attention Span was basically negligible, and this made it terribly difficult to learn, something that would hinder him throughout his life. But he was the lovable good-looking rogue who was very small but stuck up for himself. This mainly got him into trouble, and this along with the fact that he was generally a nightmare to teach saw him soon being involved in special classes and because of his loud vocal ticks, the teachers I think we’re happy for him not to be in general classes.
Tim was very fortunate to go to Fryberg High School, a fantastic school which provided a special learning environment with one-on-one teacher help that Tim needed.
When Tim was moving on to high school from intermediate school, we had to make a decision on where he could go. We visited all the high schools including PN Boys High, that was interesting meeting. We met with Mr. Tim O’Connor, the PNBH rector at the time who basically said that PNBH wouldn’t be ideal for Tim as morning Assembly interruptions with Tim’s vocal Tourette’s wouldn’t be ideal. He had no idea about TS, and I don’t think he could really be bothered.
You wouldn’t of thought someone in such a senior position could be so ignorant with a lack of understanding but worse a lack of trying to want to understand, needless to say that Boys High was off the list which pissed me off a bit as I truly believed at the time that Tim needed some authority and discipline as I we could see that Tim was starting to go off the rails a little and as I boys high old boy I thought the place would be good for him.
Anyway, it wasn’t to be which was a blessing in disguise and Fryberg was fantastic but don’t get me wrong it wasn’t all roses, far from it as Tim could have been expelled at least three times I can remember, I got to know the Rector and Head Deans office pretty well.
As I look back on a couple of what seem funny stories now but certainly not at the time, I smile a little.
Like the time Tim was took Marijuana to school. This was a couple of crumbs in a small container that Tim was flashing around. I don’t know where he got it from, but it wouldn’t have been smokable. As always, he got caught and was suspended I think for a couple of days.
Another time I got a call from the school telling me that Time had bought a knife to school. Turns out it was a bread knife from home that he put in his school bag as he had got offside with some kids who said they were going to beat him after school. Nothing happened of course but Tim had another suspension.
And there were the Times when Tim was presumed to be smoking out on the field amongst several other classroom behavior issues where he would say the teacher just doesn’t understand.
Since being a Jockey
So, since his days of riding when he finished his riding career as a fully-fledged jockey who had a small sting as a jumps rider Tim had stayed in the Racing game. He now breaks horses in for trainers such as Lisa Latta, one of the best trainers in the Central district’s region and certainly the biggest. Tim also rides work every morning for Lisa and is now considered one of the most experienced Track work riders in the Awapuni track.
He now has a son, Noah whose four years old and a lovely partner Marnie, whom has stuck with Tim for 6 or 7, He still deals with his Tourette’s daily. But he is luckier than a lot of people and he knows it.