CD Alex Wadelton creates #beamodel campaign for social enterprise fashion brand HoMie

Freelance creative director Alex Wadelton, formerly of Zoo Group, Y&R, Cummins and McCann, and The Project’s managing editor Tom Whitty have teamed up with comedian Tommy Little and photographer Stu Morley to bring attention to Youth Homelessness Matters Day and social enterprise fashion brand HoMie.

So much of social media is focussed on having the perfect life, the perfect body, and the perfect image, but life isn’t like that. The reality is that more than 100,000 Australians are homeless, and around 40% of those are aged just 25 or younger.

So, over the past few weeks, Little posted a series of increasingly raunchy snaps to his Instagram account in a desperate attempt to #beamodel and garner superficial attention to himself. The series quickly drew attention, receiving more than 100,000 likes and widespread media attention.

Last night on The Project, it was revealed that each of the images of Little had been cropped to frame out reality, like so much of social media does.

He was in fact posing on the streets in front of the toilets kids have to clean themselves in, on a couch to show how many youths couch hop from night to night, at youth homeless crisis centres, on a car to show where many youth sleep, lying on top of a particularly evil form of design called hostile architecture, and at the HoMie store. He was, of course, wearing (sometimes barely) HoMie clothes in every shot.

Watch the full segment on The Project’s Facebook page here.

Check the before and after shots at Tommy’s instagram page here.

In the three hours after the airing of The Project special report, HoMie registered more than $80k of online sales (up from a usual monthly average of $6k online sales) as well as having more than 23,000 hits on their website (last year they had 104,000 visits), with sales continuing to climb.

That’s tens of thousands of dollars to help Australia’s hidden population of homeless youth, and millions more educated of the invisible plight of the thousands of Aussies doing it tough.

So, be a model citizen yourself and head to homie.com.au to buy some sweet threads that will give you instant street cred. 100% of profits are donated to helping homeless Aussie kids get back on their feet.

The full list of charity organisations supported by the campaign are:

Lighthouse Foundation

Lighthouse Foundation provides homeless young people from backgrounds of long-term neglect and abuse, with a home, a sense of family, and around-the-clock therapeutic care that is individually tailored, trauma informed and proven to work.

YSAS

Youth Support + Advocacy Service (YSAS) is a leading youth health not-for-profit agency that enables young people experiencing serious disadvantage to access the resources and support they require to lead healthy and fulfilling lives.

Launch Housing

Launch Housing is an independent Melbourne based community organization with a single mission: To end homelessness. It was formed from the merger of two of Melbourne’s largest and most respected homelessness services, HomeGround Services and Hanover, in July 2015.

Ladder

Ladder is an independent not-for-profit organisation established in 2007 by three AFL footballers to help young people aged 16 – 25 break the cycle of homelessness. Ladder gives young people the tools to take control of their lives, transition to independence and achieve their potential. It is the official charity partner of the AFL.

HoMie

HoMie envisions an Australian society free of homelessness. Our primary mission is to build confidence and job skills for young people to create unique pathways out of homelessness and hardship.

Youth Homelessness Matters Day is today.

For more information go to www.youthhomelessnessmatters.info.

Client: HoMie

Tommy Little, tommylittle.com.au