ABOUT

Despite 1 in 5 people worldwide having dyslexia, 97% of the population still view it negatively. This is because the current definition still classifies dyslexia as a “learning disability,” an “impairment,” or a “medical disorder.” But recent research has shown that dyslexics outperform other people at a wide variety of skills such as creativity, empathy, leadership, and outside the box thinking - skills that are especially valuable in the workplace, and which can lead to sustained economic growth.

So Virgin – a company famously founded by Sir Richard Branson, who is dyslexic - partnered with charity Made by Dyslexia, LinkedIn, and Dictionary . com to shift focus to the more positive term “dyslexic thinking.” To raise awareness, LinkedIn changed its platform to feature dyslexic thinking as an official skill. Dictionary . com then vetted it and added it to their dictionary.

Sir Richard was the first to announce that he had added the term to his LinkedIn profile, creating a groundswell of support. We also ran hyper-targeted ads on LinkedIn tailored to HR professionals encouraging them to actively seek candidates who listed the skill.

The campaign was immediately taken up internationally, with an opportunity to see of 1,046,067,131. Tracking public sentiment, we saw positive mentions about dyslexia increase by 1562%, while negative mentions decreased by 4450%. Within 30 days, 13,000 HR and recruitment leaders had also viewed the advert explaining how Dyslexic Thinkers could help take their company to the next level. Finally, over 10,200 people had added “Dyslexic Thinking” as a skill on LinkedIn, a number which continues to grow to this day. The end goal here will be sustained economic growth, as a more neurodiverse workforce has been proven to stimulate innovation, growth and financial gains across multiple sectors.