Foreign model, desi brand a hit combo

NEW DELHI: It was early last year when Ludhiana-based Nahar Retail, which runs the Cotton County apparel retail chain, was flooded with suggestions from its franchisees. Most of them, apparently worried over the brand’s last advertising campaign that had failed to stimulate sales at their stores, wanted a new campaign featuring foreign models. Their plea: Indian models, unless they were celebrities, did little to boost sales while white-skinned foreigners held sway over consumers.

Prompted by this argument, Nahar Retail, which then had over 150 stores in tier-II cities across northern region, went on to feature foreign models in its next campaign. To its pleasant surprise, foreign models proved far less expensive than their Indian peers. And as soon as the campaign hit the market, smile returned to sales managers’ face.

“Every garment highlighted in the campaign sold off in huge numbers,” says Nahar Retail’s associate vice president Sachin Sahni. “The campaign was a hit. Besides, these models cost us one-tenth of what a top Indian model would cost.”

It’s been a practice for several premium Indian apparel brands to hire foreign models. But now it is the mid-segment brands such as Cotton County, Duke or Koutons that are actively wooing foreign models. Foreign models hired by mid-segment apparel brands charge between Rs 20,000 and Rs 40,000 for a day’s shoot while an established Indian model would charge over a lakh. Well-known brand ambassadors such as cricketers or film stars are known to charge over Rs 1 crore for a shoot.

Says apparel brand Duke’s brand manager Gagan Jain, “Foreign models give an international feel to the brand.” Duke has been using foreign models for the last 3-4 years. An efficient network of modelling agencies such as Inega and Sabrina and ad agencies has made hiring a foreign model pretty easy for brands. These models mainly come from Eastern Europe.

“Many of these foreign models are not really models in the true sense. They don’t even have a proper portfolio,“ says Pranav Awasthi, who runs New-Delhi-based modelling agency Glitz Modelling. Moreover, there are around 25-30 foreign models available for commercials in India at a time. And some of them are repeated for different brands in the same product category.

An ad agency head who has shot several commercials with foreign models points out, “Some of these foreign models are actually tourists and hence don’t have work permits. They get away with modelling assignments since there are no stringent checks within the modelling industry. This mostly happens in the case of mid-tier, small-budget suitings brands.”