The safety and security of models in the marketing and advertisement world should be paramount and non-negotiable. This axiom that ought to be taken for granted is surprisingly the one thing many elements in the corporate world tend not to appreciate as they continue to show preference in working with freelance models and thus promote a culture where the relevance and importance of agencies to properly represent and protect the safety and interests of models is called to question.

Model and Talent managements exist to provide their models with the best guidance and opportunities in an ever-changing and chaotic marketplace. They groom, train, coach, certify and make models comply with the professional requirements of a plethora of different brands, companies, designer houses and campaigns. Agencies are also tasked with protecting models from unsafe working environments as well as to make sure they negotiate better booking fees for their models. This is the importance of such institutions and how it only makes sense for any serious and professional client would want to work with Agency models. This sadly isn't the reality on the ground.

The rise of an appetite for marketing agencies and marketing departments to want to work with freelance models or agencies without any real experience is masked under the pretext that most agencies are disingenuous, untrustworthy, incompetent and steal from their models. Whether these claims are true or false really depends on a case by case approach on each agency but the failure to push for my Agency regulation or any other avenue for growth and stability is worrisome. The alternative approach of only working with freelance models presents in itself a plethora of risks, challenges, vulnerabilities and drives further to the ground the collective efforts of agencies to develop institutional capacities that open up whole cities and countries to the global beauty market.

Several ill intentioned clients can take advantage of the lack of agencies to pry on unsuspecting models, abuse the sensibilities of desperate models, underpay models for great projects and even altogether refuse to remunerate models for their work. What we need are more agencies, more dialogue and more regulation. In a perfect world only Agency models should be booked.

Written by Walter T. Madede