Large Format

Last year we hired several models for a photo shoot for a recruiting campaign at my firm. It was the usual “united colors of megacorp” model search, with all races accounted for (or at least implied). You got your white male, white female, Hispanic male, Hispanic female, African American male, African American female…and so on. There is something inherently creepy about choosing models. It goes beyond who is hot and who is not, especially for corporate. You have to make distinctions between people who are too good looking, too sexy, or too…whatever…to be accountants and boring white collar workers. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s creepy to have to cut someone because their nose doesn’t look right while your going through model cards sitting on your ass in an office munching on cheetos.

The pool of models in New York is not as large as you’d think, and it constantly amazes me when I see models that I’ve hired in ads around the city. It happens more often that you’d expect. One guy I saw in a Bud Light ad, another one in a Total Vision Care catalog. Recently one of the women I saw modeled for one of the local colleges and was featured on a subway billboard.

In Times Square across from my building, Target has bought all of the advertising on one central building between Seventh Ave and Broadway. For the last few years they have put up massive billboards, probably at least ten or twelve in all that completely surround the building, and each probably six or seven stories high. Every day when I come out of my building I see these billboards and it wasn’t until today that I realized that one of the giant models on the giant billboard was one of the models that I hired last year.

I guess I’m still at the stage where that sort of thing impresses me – ooo I hired that same guy that someone else hired for something way cooler than what I did. Maybe one day one of my photos will be up on a billboard like that…