SINGAPORE: The social enterprise’s new campaign challenges inspiration tropes and asks why disabled talent still struggles for mainstream visibility.

Australian social enterprise Disinfluencer is challenging the advertising industry to move disability representation beyond visibility, launching a social campaign that asks a deliberately ambitious question: When will I be famous?

Created in-house, the campaign takes aim at the tendency to frame disabled people as inspirational and instead argues for them to be treated as models, actors, creators, influencers and other paid talent on the strength of their ambitions and abilities.

Disinfluencer founder Simone Eyles said the new campaign was designed to extend that conversation by asking what representation should look like once the “inspirational” framing is stripped away.

“I don’t want disabled people to be famous because they are disabled, I want them to be famous because they have dreams, talent and goals. Our campaign plays with the absurdity of the question ‘When will I be famous’ while making a much bigger point about how can you be famous when you aren’t even visible?” Eyles said.

At the centre of the work is a challenge to advertisers and creative businesses to cast disabled people as part of mainstream culture rather than making disability itself the focus of the campaign.

Eyles said disability representation had too often been filtered through stereotypes, stories of overcoming adversity or inspirational narratives.

“For decades, disability representation has often been framed through a narrow lens, stereotypes, overcoming adversity or inspirational. Disinfluencer wants to disrupt what you think is possible. No inspiration, no exceptions, no diversity campaign, just part of the fucking picture!” she said.

The campaign continues Disinfluencer’s broader push to create paid opportunities for disabled talent. The social enterprise launched in 2024 with a crowdfunded Sydney billboard and has since expanded its offering to include talent services, inclusive stock imagery and disability inclusion education for brands and marketers.

With When will I be famous?, Disinfluencer is pushing the industry towards a distinction it considers critical: representation should not simply make disabled people visible, but give them the same opportunity to participate in advertising and popular culture as everyone else.