Home Depot’s Secret to Finding Its Boy-Next-Door Models: Hire the Boy Next Door

Of all the creative assets in a brand marketer’s toolkit, few are as humble (or essential) as the lifestyle photo—those stills and videos that feature a smiling model appearing alongside the product. Scores of agencies stand at the ready to book talent for jobs like this—often slender younglings who’ll pair their good looks with a sports car, a single malt scotch, or a pricey pair of loafers.

But what if you’re a home-improvement brand like Home Depot? It too needs models for its product photography and its expanding roster of how-to videos. But is it really worth the money to hire a gorgeous model to pose with a kitchen sink or hold a paintbrush?

Well, no. Which is one reason why the home-improvement giant puts its own employees in front of the camera instead.

“It’s what we call friends and family talent,” said Jennifer Hudson, senior manager of creative production for Studio Orange, Home Depot’s in-house incubator for its marketing materials. “These are all local folks that, as the name implies, have some connection with Home Depot.”

Home Depot is hardly the first major brand to realize the advantages of casting its own employees (and their relatives and BFFs) for marketing shoots. In 2017, for example, Sephora’s “Reach Out and Gift” holiday campaign featured sales associates picked from across the country. Earlier this year, Rite Aid’s “It Means More” campaign featured several of its store employees in spots produced by Leo Burnett, which also used stills of those employees to create in-store signage.

Outdoor apparel brand L.L. Bean doesn’t just cast its employees in its catalog shots, it maintains a page on its website that introduces them to the public.

There are several advantages to the friends-and-family strategy, though cost isn’t always among them, at least in Home Depot’s case. Just because the guy atop a ladder in the video is an employee, the company doesn’t expect him to work for free. “They are paid just as any regular actor/model would be,” a company spokesperson confirmed.

So where’s the upside? While dashing models might be necessary for ads for high-end products, everyday shoppers browsing for everyday products generally like to see people who look like they do. And instead of hiring a commercial model to act like a regular dude, it’s a lot easier to just hire the regular dude.

“Sometimes you’re looking for a pretty person,” Hudson said. “Home Depot often is not looking for a pretty person.”

In fact, pretty people in the merchandise shots can sometimes put the goods at a disadvantage.

“Modeling talent doesn’t always show off the product [well],” Hudson said. For instance, many of them “tend to be over six feet tall. If you’re standing beside a vanity, it’s just not the best look for the vanity,” she said.

Credibility and relatability are other important factors. “You want to make sure that you’re covering all kinds of ages and demographics,” Hudson said. Not only is the rank and file of many companies likely to contain a diverse mix of genders, skin tones, and body types, but those people already know the brand and exude an authenticity that can’t be made up.

Earlier this year, Rite Aid CMO Jeanniey Walden told ADWEEK that authenticity drove the decision to use employees instead of actors in its marketing. “When [I] talked to customers and associates, everybody was saying the same thing: They come to Rite Aid because it has a special connection, because the employees seem to know the guests that come in a little better,” she said.

Of course, even at Home Depot, some occasions call for a foxy model and, in those cases, “we can also get talent through local agencies,” Hudson said. But the best place to recruit on-camera talent is still the corridors of the company itself.

“We’re looking for someone relatable,” she said.