Rebranding Dyslexia

Dyslexic kids who need help are getting a Madison Avenue brand campaign

When I finished my memoir, every seasoned publishing person I talked to gave me the same advice: launch it into Dyslexia Awareness Month - October. That's when the audience is paying attention.

So I did. OUTCAST: A Dyslexic in an Ivy League World came out September 29th, timed almost to the day. I'm not going to pretend I'm above the game. I played it.

A week into October, it became clear to me that awareness season is really about selling goods and services into the dyslexia channel. I want to say it plainly, as someone who has lived his whole life at the severe end of dyslexia.

Awareness is code for the sales pitch – watch your wallets.

Awareness vs. advocacy

There is a difference between awareness and advocacy, and the industry that has grown up around dyslexia works hard to blur it.

Advocacy is unglamorous. It looks like the Parents for Reading Justice, who spend their time walking the hallways of state capitols, knocking on legislators' doors, and testifying about screening laws, teacher training, and funding. No red carpet. Sleeves rolled up. Most of the people doing that work rarely use the word "awareness" at all. They're too busy.

Awareness is something else. Awareness has a production budget. It has a premiere, a hashtag, a famous voice, and a brand to protect. It’s often aimed at how dyslexia is perceived, not at whether a struggling third grader gets evaluated. And somewhere in the background there is almost always something to buy: a course, a coaching program, a self-help book, a corporate partnership.

My book included, I'll grant you. The difference is I'm not telling you dyslexia is a superpower while I sell it.

The campaign for the search box

The UK based group, Made By Dyslexia, has their own sales pitch this season – a global re-branding campaign. They recently premiered a short animated film called What is Dyslexia?, voiced by Jeremy Irons and Liv Tyler. The title is not an accident. In the creative agency's own description of the project, people who Google that question are met with deficit-based definitions, and the film was built "to influence the Google Knowledge Panel."

Think about who types that question into Google. It isn't a successful adult who has made peace with his journey. It's a parent at eleven o'clock at night whose nine-year-old still can't read, and who has been told by the school to wait and see.

That parent needs to hear one word: disability. That word is what unlocks everything. An evaluation. An Individualized Education Plan (IEP). Protections under federal law. Trained instruction. Accommodations. Funding.

"Superpower" unlocks nothing. No school district in America has ever written an IEP for a superpower.

This isn't a fringe effort. It is an organized, professionally produced attempt to change the first answer a frightened family sees, and to swap the clinical word for the marketing one. It is happening in real time.

Actual dyslexia is too messy for Madison Avenue

I know why I'm not on anyone's poster. My story is messy.

I graduated last in my high school class and never earned a college credit. I was diagnosed and clinically documented at multiple points along the way. I spent the bulk of my career at Merrill Lynch, ending as a Senior Vice President in institutional equity sales, and for all of it I was hiding the fact that I could barely read. My Ivy League colleagues never knew. That was the point.

That is not a superpower story. There was no hidden superpower that explained my success. There was concealment, workarounds, luck, and a few people who gave me a chance. If dyslexia gave me anything, it was a lifetime of perfecting the art of failing and getting back up.

The Madison Avenue curated version of dyslexia has no room for that. It has room for the inventor, the founder, the actor with the inspiring origin story. The ubiquitous famous dyslexics list. The ones whose difficulty can be told as the opening act of a triumph. The kid at the back of the room who doesn't make it, and the adult still hiding it at fifty, are bad for the brand.

I'm fine with that. I didn't write my book to be on message. I wrote it because there is almost nothing out there about what it's actually like to live a long adult life with severe dyslexia. That gap is my story, and it doesn't fit on a red carpet.

What I'd ask for instead

I'm not against awareness in principle. I'm against awareness that replaces the thing it is supposed to lead.

If you want to do something this October, skip the hashtag. Find out whether your state requires universal screening. Ask whether your teachers are trained in structured literacy. Ask your school district how long a parent waits for an evaluation. Find out what the parents in your statehouse hallways are pushing for and show up with them. Those questions don't trend. They change kids' lives.

And if you're a parent who just typed "What is dyslexia?" into Google and got a film about the superpower, here is the answer from someone who has lived it: it's a disability. It's real, it's lifelong, and your child has rights. Use them.

Awareness is the Sales Pitch. Advocacy is the Knock on the Door.