Of all of the artistic property in a model marketer’s toolkit, few are as humble (or important) as the life-style photograph—these stills and movies that characteristic a smiling mannequin showing alongside the product. Scores of businesses stand on the able to guide expertise for jobs like this—usually slender younglings who’ll pair their attractiveness with a sports activities automotive, a single malt scotch, or a dear pair of loafers.

However what for those who’re a home-improvement model like Home Depot? It too wants fashions for its product images and its increasing roster of how-to movies. However is it actually well worth the cash to rent a stunning mannequin to pose with a kitchen sink or maintain a paintbrush?

Effectively, no. Which is one motive why the home-improvement big places its personal staff in entrance of the digital camera as a substitute.

“It’s what we name family and friends expertise,” stated Jennifer Hudson, senior supervisor of artistic manufacturing for Studio Orange, House Depot’s in-house incubator for its advertising and marketing supplies. “These are all native people that, because the title implies, have some reference to House Depot.”

House Depot is hardly the primary main model to understand some great benefits of casting its personal staff (and their kin and BFFs) for advertising and marketing shoots. In 2017, for instance, Sephora’s “Attain Out and Reward” vacation marketing campaign featured gross sales associates picked from throughout the nation. Earlier this yr, Ceremony Help’s “It Means Extra” marketing campaign featured a number of of its store employees in spots produced by Leo Burnett, which additionally used stills of these staff to create in-store signage.

Outside attire model L.L. Bean doesn’t simply forged its staff in its catalog photographs, it maintains a page on its website that introduces them to the general public.

There are a number of benefits to the friends-and-family technique, although price isn’t at all times amongst them, a minimum of in House Depot’s case. Simply because the man atop a ladder within the video is an worker, the corporate doesn’t anticipate him to work without spending a dime. “They’re paid simply as any common actor/mannequin can be,” an organization spokesperson confirmed.

So the place’s the upside? Whereas dashing fashions is likely to be crucial for adverts for high-end merchandise, on a regular basis customers searching for on a regular basis merchandise typically prefer to see individuals who seem like they do. And as a substitute of hiring a business mannequin to behave like an everyday dude, it’s loads simpler to only rent the common dude.