Award-winning I Am Not A Typo campaign launches first ever 100 Incorrect Baby Names book, with a billboard campaign out now
- Two-time PRWeek winners[1], the IANAT campaign is led by collaborators across communications, marketing and beyond, all urging Big Tech to update ‘harmful’ systems to reflect today’s multicultural UK
- Some 41%[2] of UK adults (22.6 million ‘typos’) – have experienced autocorrect changing their name, or their name being flagged as incorrect[3] – finds nationally representative survey by I Am Not A Typo
I Am Not A Typo (IANAT), the award-winning campaign calling on the Tech Giants to correct autocorrect and spell-check spell-check to make the technology more inclusive launches the 100 Incorrect Baby Names book with a billboard campaign.
Powered by a collective of UK communications, marketing and creative pros, a tongue-in-cheek accompanying billboard campaign hyping the launch of 100 Incorrect Baby Names says: “Naming your child is the most important thing you’ll ever do. So don’t f*ck it up.”
About the launch of the 100 Incorrect Baby Names book, Cathal Wogan, IANAT campaigner, otherwise Senior Consulting Director at Blurred, says: “As the title suggests, this book contains 100 incorrect baby names. ‘But’, you might say, ‘a child’s name can’t be incorrect, surely’. Well, you’re right. However, your phone or your laptop might disagree with you.
“Every day, would-be parents leaf through baby name books to find the beautiful or inspiring names that they might give to their children. But if they come up with something too ethnic, too interesting, too culturally divergent, that name could be incorrect. Wrong. A typo. That’s why we have written 100 Incorrect Baby Names, and that’s why we want the Tech Giants to correct autocorrect and spell-check spell-check.”
I Am Not a Typo is a collective aiming to create social change, so no one feels like an oversight. We look at the link between identity and technology, challenging tech giants to adapt. It aims to create a world that sees and supports all of us. It launched its first UK-based campaign in March 2024 – challenging tech giants to change their name dictionaries, so that all first names are treated equally by our technology.
The group led by a core team at Blurred – a communications consultancy – and powered by a network of collaborators carving out time to drive it forward, including: designers Chris Harman and Lee Freeman at Made by Parent, Ben O’Brien at Ben Draws, Leah Ivens at Infinity Outdoor, Richard Fingland at Park Communications Ltd , freelance creative director Alex Cooper, as well as Professor Rashmi Dyal-Chand and journalist Dhruti Shah, and several other independent supporters who wish to see this inclusivity issue tackled – not written off as a tech quirk to be ignored by those who face it.
A whopping 22.6 million ‘typos’ in the UK have experienced autocorrect changing their name, or their name being flagged as incorrect – as revealed by IANAT’s new national survey.
IANAT found that among people who experience autocorrect changing their name or being flagged as incorrect, 61%[4] say they feel negatively about it (whether that’s feeling uncomfortable, angry, disrespected, upset, excluded and/or resentful) – and one in ten say that the technology is ‘racist’[5]. Over 4 in 10 (41%) say that technology companies need to update their naming dictionaries to better reflect today’s multicultural society.
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