About 18 per cent of Australians, roughly one in five, live with a disability and yet, according to global talent agency Zebedee, people with a disability represent less than one per cent of talent cast in the advertising we see. This has risen, slowly, from a lamentable 0.06 per cent in 2016 (in fashion and beauty advertising alone, it was a dire 0.02 per cent) in no small part thanks to the efforts of people like Laura Johnson and Zoe Proctor, co-founders of Zebedee.
In five short years to Gucci, Skims, Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty lingerie brand, Burberry and Tommy Hilfiger. Some may have a disability, others represent trans minorities, be neurodiverse or physically different, such as model Ellie Goldstein who lives with Down syndrome and was cast in a collaborative shoot with Italia and Gucci. A resultant image became the brand’s most-liked Instagram post. “Validating,” Proctor says of the casting. “It gave us the ammunition to say, ‘This is what your brand could achieve.’”
