Pro­mo­tional Mod­el­ing Work

The word ‘Model’ – who do you think of when you hear it? A scant­ily clad lin­gerie man­nequin? A cover girl on Vogue? Many inside and out­side the indus­try don’t under­stand mod­el­ing. In addi­tion to strik­ing faces and physiques, mod­els come in all shapes, sizes, ages, & eth­nic­i­ties. Male and female mod­els are used for many dif­fer­ent jobs beyond fash­ion pho­tog­ra­phy and cloth­ing.

Ulti­mately, a model’s pur­pose is to help a com­pany pro­mote a prod­uct. Com­pa­nies look for an employee … one who can ‘sell’ a prod­uct, which means being friendly, out­go­ing and attrac­tive, and able to look like a ‘nor­mal’ con­sumer of the prod­uct. The employee-model must be able to engage poten­tial cus­tomers and be a first-line sales agent.

Pro­mo­tional Model Julia Stegner

First, remem­ber that you are being hired for mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tional mod­el­ing; that is, you are an employee of the firm that hires you, not a prince or princess! Addi­tion­ally, a model appear­ing with a prod­uct or pro­mot­ing an arti­cle of cloth­ing, needs to have a look that can be dupli­cated. If the model is show­cas­ing a sweater, for exam­ple, she/he actu­ally has to look like the cus­tomers the com­pany is tar­get­ing for the sweater, or look like some­one that cus­tomer might know.

A good model, like any good pho­to­graphic sub­ject, knows how to enter a ‘no stress zone’ once the lights go on. He projects an image of con­fi­dence and approach­a­bil­ity. She is pre­pared, nat­ural, calm, & relaxed through­out the photo shoot, in spite of the demands from the pho­tog­ra­pher and from herself.

The model should be sell­ing her­self as part of the entire prod­uct expe­ri­ence when the cam­era starts snap­ping pho­tos.
For photo shoots, par­tic­u­larly those sell­ing prod­ucts, the art direc­tor is look­ing for a model with a par­tic­u­lar style. He has to look inter­ested, com­pe­tent, and famil­iar with the prod­ucts. (As any­one who’s ever taken pho­tos at a fam­ily out­ing can attest, look­ing nat­ural and relaxed when a cam­era is out isn’t the eas­i­est thing in the world to learn how to do.) Con­se­quently, mod­els who radi­ate that nat­ural air of relax­ation are much in demand.

The last set of tips for mod­els who want to remain in demand is pro­fes­sion­al­ism. Con­trary to myth, mod­els are not divas or knights around whom the pho­to­graphic world revolves. Instead, mod­els are coop­er­a­tive & com­pe­tent pro­fes­sion­als who show up on time, tell peo­ple when they’re going to be late, work with clients and pho­tog­ra­phers for max­i­mum flex­i­bil­ity, and take the time to make the expe­ri­ence pleas­ant for every­one involved in the shoot.

Like all pro­fes­sion­als, mod­els live on refer­rals from prior clients and cus­tomers. Remem­ber that one poor ref­er­ence, as in any busi­ness resume, can destroy an entire career. Pro­fes­sion­als do their home­work, they learn the prod­uct, they study & emu­late the cus­tomers who’ll want the prod­uct, and they learn to lis­ten to what the client asks for. The final image the client uses is a cul­mi­na­tion of sev­eral dif­fer­ent pro­fes­sion­als doing their job, and the model needs to remem­ber that she/he is an employee who aids in the co-creation of the image. To make the most of your mod­el­ing career, and to remain a model in demand, remem­ber your demeanor is as impor­tant as your face.