#amelonaday campaign featured on new Steller app in Apple stores

The #amelonaday movement has reached Apple retail stores.

Photo via Steller
The new app chronicles the campaign in its demo.

A cause awareness campaign – which started in honor of Traumatic Brain Injury Awareness Month in March and rapidly turned into a collaborative effort among Instagram users from around the world who post creative pictures using melons – was created by Michael “Maz” McWilliams, cofounder and creative director of Digs Apparel, a men’s sportswear company that is also dedicated to raising awareness for TBI.

The project, encouraged by one of McWilliams’ fellow Instagram followers in which McWilliams dedicated 100 days to carrying around a watermelon to shed light on TBI, quickly garnered media attention after being featured on social media sites Instagram and Steller. The story is featured on the Steller app on the new iPhone 6 and 6+ that launched in September. The app is only available on Apple’s new operating system, the foundation of iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

“The Steller folks have been on my wing from pretty early on in the #amelonaday movement,” said McWilliams, who has a second home in Harvey Cedars. “They have shown so much support and love and gone out of their way to provide opportunities. It’s been wonderful.

“Steller is an incredibly intuitive storytelling app that really goes a step farther than just posting a single image. You can craft an entire story on the go. It’s very special,” he added.

Due in part to the recognition from Steller, the #amelonaday project has inspired an open discussion about TBI and the many struggles that come with it, something McWilliams is all too familiar with as his older brother Timothy C. “Timbo” McWilliams Jr. suffered from TBI after being mugged in Hoboken in 2001. At age 27, Timothy died in a car crash in 2005 after suffering from a seizure while driving, a complication from his TBI.

The story is described in the #amelonaday demo on Steller’s app, the opening of which claims that someone in the U.S. sustains a traumatic brain injury every 21 seconds.

To learn more about TBI and the #amelonaday movement, visit steller.co/stories/243410346394519335.

— Kelley Anne Essinger

This article was published in The SandPaper.