Published: 20th Dec 2023
This isn’t a fairy tale, it’s real life working with Models Direct even if you’ve been booked as a pretend family. Here’s to some May half-term fun at Morrisons’ café and their PR photo shoot ahead of a café offer treat for the short school holiday break! Who doesn’t love an offer?
What’s a pretend family?
As an agency, we have to think on our feet and be innovative when our team cannot find a real family that fits a client’s brief. Family modelling is in high demand and we’re always calling for families, regardless of set-up or formation, to come and join our modelling talent.
In Morrisons’ case, a company that we’ve successfully teamed up with for their marketing campaigns on numerous occasions over the years, they needed a mum, dad and young daughter to advertise their products and services for half-time family time offers at their café. Their marketing team documented their brief diligently and understood their target audience so we knew how important it was to match this to get the ball rolling.
We couldn’t bring them a real family due to the availability and logistics of other families who are on our books. Bringing people together who’ve never met before can bring challenges. Sometimes they don’t get on as well as they’d hoped to have or the connection isn’t believable on camera or film. Nevertheless, our modelling coordinators still reached out to our models and explained the situation to them.
For this booking, we connected real-life mother and daughter, Rohini and Anna, and male model Sa to close the brief. They all accepted the assignment and were excited to be part of the project in Colindale, London. What’s more, they all got on really well!
For Rohini and Anna, it was perfect as the photoshoot took place just shortly before the short break from school, on the 24th of May, when Anna had to take a day off due to feeling under the weather. However, she perked up on the day of the shoot and here’s what her mum shared with us:
I was supporting my 7-year-old for her Media PR for Morrisons café kids’ deal. We were posing for a couple of still photos doing what we naturally do- look at the menu, decide what is healthy, what might taste good… It was funny making jokes and seeing how the cameras and lighting work. Considering she was off school for a cough and hadn’t slept much the night before, she did really well. She said, “It was fun”. Thank you, Charlie, Simon, Lyn and Sawa for making it all enjoyable!
What great feedback! It sounded like a relaxing and overall perfect experience, particularly for our young model, Anna.
Sa also did incredibly well to step in as “dad” for the PR photo shoot. He translated his role for the day really well on camera and you’d never have thought he was acting the part. It’s not an easy thing to do especially when you’re being taken pictures of rather than filming. You have to get the right mood and expression at the exact moment you’re being photographed. You also have to give the impression that this is real especially if you haven’t met the other models you’ll be working with. Sa rescued the day and without his diverse open approach, it wouldn’t have been the great success that it is either.
Sa left us some wholesome feedback:
The professionalism was amazing! Made us feel so calm welcomed and looked after. We were well fed and made a new Instagram friends too 🙂 Also, Charlie from Models direct kept me informed throughout, an email beforehand then a follow up call. This truly was impressive unlike other agencies I have worked with. I am inspired and motivated to continue to represent the MD family!
Thanks, Sa!
And that’s a wrap from our trio. Shout out to them for being incredible. Another winning Morrisons campaign is in the bag! We can’t wait for the next booking! Watch this space, we’re sure we’ll be seeing more of Rohini, Anna and Sa!
