‘Not This Model’: Why Are Two Entrepreneurs On A Giant Billboard In SoHo?

Walk through SoHo and you will see plenty of models.

Luxury fashion campaigns cover buildings and digital screens, with carefully chosen faces selling watches, clothes and lifestyles. Manhattan has perfected the art of turning people into symbols of aspiration.

Smartlead decided to use that visual language differently.

The company has put two people on billboards in SoHo with a simple message underneath:

NOT THIS MODEL.

There is no product shot or explanation of who the two people are or even what Smartlead does or sell. They are simply there, looking out from a billboard surrounded by the kind of advertising that normally celebrates a very different idea of success.

For Smartlead, that contrast is the point.

The two people on the billboard have built businesses of their own. They are entrepreneurs, rather than professional models or celebrities brought in to represent a luxury brand.

"We kept thinking about what it means to see billboards like this everywhere in Manhattan," said Pranav Harish, Head of Growth and Marketing at Smartlead. "There are people who become the face of a brand because they look a certain way or represent a certain lifestyle. We wanted to ask whether there are other kinds of people who deserve to be put on a billboard too."

That question led to "NOT THIS MODEL."

The campaign is not an argument against fashion, luxury brands or the people who appear in their advertising. It is an attempt to broaden the idea of who gets celebrated.

There are people building companies, hiring teams, creating products, taking risks and spending years trying to turn an idea into something real. Their work is rarely represented in the same visual language as luxury or fashion.

Smartlead wanted to change that for a moment.

The choice of location matters.

SoHo is one of Manhattan's most recognizable intersections of fashion, culture, design, business and commerce. It is also an environment where brands compete intensely for attention. A technology company putting a traditional corporate advertisement there would hardly be unusual.

Putting two entrepreneurs on a billboard and asking people to reconsider what they are looking at is a different proposition.

The campaign also reflects something about how Smartlead sees its own brand.

The company has been customer-funded since it was founded and has built its business around sales and customers rather than making fundraising the center of its story. Its product helps businesses automate and scale outbound sales, a category that sits far away from the fashion and luxury brands that dominate much of Manhattan's advertising landscape.

The billboard therefore becomes a statement about what the company values.

Harish said the creative was designed to leave some room for interpretation.

"We didn't want to explain who they were or tell people what they were supposed to think when they saw them," he said. "The first reaction can simply be, 'Who are these people?' Then you see the line underneath and start thinking about why they're there."

That ambiguity is important because the campaign is ultimately about recognition.

A billboard can make a person visible for a few seconds. Fashion and luxury brands have been doing that for decades. Smartlead is asking whether the same kind of attention can be given to people whose achievement comes from building something rather than appearing in front of a camera.

For a technology company, it is also an unusual way to think about brand building.

Most software companies exist almost entirely online. Their customers encounter them through websites, search results, social feeds, sales calls and product interfaces. Putting the company into the physical environment of Manhattan changes the relationship between the brand and the audience.

Someone walking through SoHo may never have heard of Smartlead. They may not know what the company does. They may simply notice two people on a billboard and wonder why they are there.

That question is enough to start the conversation.

The campaign is part of Smartlead's larger outdoor advertising push across cities including New York, London, Sydney, Miami and San Francisco. Each city has its own creative rather than receiving the same advertisement everywhere.

In New York, the message is deliberately simple.

NOT THIS MODEL.

It is a small challenge to the idea of who gets to be the face of success in a city where success is one of the things most aggressively advertised.