Athletes Are the Models of Credibility in Ad Campaigns

It’s not enough these days for fashion models to sit in front of a camera looking gorgeous.

Now many models are expected to be athletes too.

Models who surf, skate, run, bungee jump and otherwise push the envelope in sports are in demand. Companies want real athletes in their ads because it enhances their product in the eyes of consumers.

“The attitude is, ‘If you expect me to be a serious consumer of this ad, don’t throw in a model. Use real athletes who know what they’re doing,’ ” says Dave Weiss, owner of a modeling agency for athletes called Sports Unlimited, based in Portland. Weiss started the agency with 10 models six years ago and now represents more than 1,000 athletes.

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Using celebrity athletes to peddle merchandise is nothing new, but the new faces are mostly unknown amateurs who engage in nontraditional sports.

Roxy, the juniors division of Quiksilver in Costa Mesa, has a team of women surfers who model in fashion shoots.

“All of our girls are real girls who are active,” says Amy Patrick, marketing representative for Roxy.

Hardcore Sports Co., an Irvine-based sportswear company, uses snowboarders, wake boarders, surfers, skaters and other practitioners of alternative and extreme sports to show off their clothes.

“It lends a lot of credibility if you put someone in a board short who can really surf,” says Connie Jordan, vice president of Hardcore in charge of the company’s juniors line, Hardcore Candi.

“It would have been real easy to hire a gorgeous, cute model, but to find someone who looks great in the clothes and be a role model for others was our goal.”

So Hardcore found Angela Neill, a 15-year-old Huntington Beach resident who, as a sophomore at Huntington Beach High, is on the varsity cross-country, soccer and track teams. Angela models for both Candi and Yamaha; she’s been photographed riding a Wave Runner water scooter and running.

“I feel more comfortable doing that than sitting in front of a camera because I love sports,” she says.

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Angela represents a new breed of model, someone with muscles instead of an emaciated waif.

The modeling industry “is using more women with muscle definition who are strong but feminine, and I think it’s about time,” Weiss says. “Fashion has been a skin-and-bones industry, and that’s not the best image to promote to young people.”