Before You Turn Away, Put Yourself In My Place

Imagine if you were homeless... well that's exactly what Weingart's wants you to do!

To raise awareness for their homeless center, Weingart wanted to make people imagine themselves being homeless. But we're not talking a night on the streets or rummaging for scraps to eat, it's only a homeless experience that lasts for a minute or to. They started by photographing people living on the streets of LA and gave each of them a blank cardboard to sign and had them write the same message: Before you turn away, put yourself in my place. Followed by the URL, weingart.org. Then they took those images, blew them up life-size, removed their faces and made them into photo-realistic cardboard cutouts. The cutouts were placed in upscale shopping centers in Bevery Hills and Santa Monica. 

Such a great campaign as it's sometimes hard to approach issues like this, the success really does lie in making everyday people part of the awareness. This new approach helped to raise funds for Weingart..

Agency: David & Goliath Los Angeles, USA.