Discover how one of most prestigious modeling agencies in the world achieved fifty thousand incremental model bookings and maintains over two thousand digital portfolios.
IMG Models is one of the most prestigious modeling agencies in the world. It was founded in 1987 by sports agent Mark McCormack and is headquartered in New York City, with additional offices in London, Los Angeles, Milan, Paris, and Sydney. IMG Models is known for representing some of the most famous and successful models in the world, such as Gisele Bündchen, Alessandra Ambrosio, Adriana Lima, Kendall Jenner, and Gigi Hadid. The agency also represents a variety of other talents, including athletes, actors, and musicians.
The organization was facing a major challenge to facilitate real-time collaboration across global teams, catering to iterative demands and seamless integrations. Additionally, they aimed to streamline the handling and presentation of high-resolution portfolio assets critical for individual client branding, managing massive user loads without compromising asset quality or system performance.
Learn how Icreon helped them build a cost-effective and scalable solution that would allow them to store, organize and manage model profiles and portfolios while creating more efficient workflows for the operations team.
The organization's existing business platform could not handle the heavy user base and relevant assets. Some operational inefficiencies involved the manual approach for vetting model profiles before onboarding them – a costly and delayed onboarding process. IMG Models was in need of a scalable solution that would automate their processes and save time, effort, and cost in onboarding models.
As IMG operates cross-departmentally, in global teams, collaborating on multiple projects in real time – the company did not have any centralized system that could satisfy the steady demand for iterations and integrations amongst staff members with the necessary permissions.
The current platform also didn’t have social media integration supported for extended model portfolio access.
Working closely with IMG leaders to better understand the day-to-day operational activities, Icreon recommended switching to the most enterprise-friendly Drupal CMS platform for a cost-effective, scalable solution. The team then created a digital roadmap to build an enterprise-class solution encompassing various features and tools to reduce the inefficiencies within their internal processes.
As the organization deals with multiple model portfolios (images and videos), data storage and rendering were complex and time-consuming for the existing system. To overcome this issue, the team at Icreon developed a centralized repository where model portfolios were grouped into packages that could be shared as links with agencies and managers instantly. The solution allows for the creation of exhaustive model profiles, which are stored in a centralized repository accessible to staff members with the necessary permissions.
Using advanced tools in content hosting, publishing, and delivering, the new platform could handle and manipulate large volumes of assets and users without sacrificing the speed and performance of any of the properties. Localized instances for each global office with extensive tagging features have been built to help avoid the duplication of workflows and sharing of assets.
The workflows have automated the process of vetting model profiles before onboarding them. IMG staff can vote, and approve/reject models based on their roles. At the heart of the solution lies a notification and action center that tracks all activities within the apps and generates alerts for action that needs to be taken during model onboarding process. Additionally, Icreon team worked on creating an iPhone app named Scout app that has loaded with similar features and functionality of the web application to enable IMG members to track model profiles on the go and make informed decisions. Recognizing the nature of IMG Models' business, Icreon strategically integrated Instagram with the scouting app to simplify clients' validation process, allowing seamless access to a model's credibility through their Instagram feed as well.
The team at Icreon addressed the challenge of manual and time-consuming talent management process with a centralized repository of model profiles. Doing this allowed easy access for the staff members with permissions. Also, several checks were introduced as the selection criteria of models with the brand.
IMG Models was looking for a modern web application that could bring a new perspective to talent discovery and management online. Icreon delivered a solution that was capable of uploading/handling exhaustive model profiles through a centralized repository and making it accessible seamlessly to the staff.
Most IMG users were on iOS platforms, so Icreon proposed developing a scouting application for iOS platform replicating its web app’s features and functionality. This iOS application allows IMG staff to record and track model profiles on the go, saving effort. Now IMG Models have easy access to their audience.
Icreon brought automation into the business model. Several workflows have been built to automate the process of vetting model profiles before onboarding them. For instance, a notification and action center were introduced to track all activities within the apps to further generate alerts.
Considering the nature of IMG Models business, Icreon enabled social media integration within the scouting app, allowing their clients to check and validate the credibility of the model shortlisted or hired. This approach enables the easy fetching of models Instagram feed to the application.
The solution offered a centralized, easily accessible repository of thousands of high-quality images, videos, and other portfolio assets. All the portfolios can be easily grouped into packages, and links can be shared instantly with agencies and managers via a communication board. The solution could automate all the necessary actions, such as vetting profiles based on various rules and checks for easy decision-making for onboarding, live news feeds highlighting the activity on model profiles, reminders to alert its users regarding any necessary actions, etc. IMG Models received a significant achievement of 50,000 model bookings and the curation of 2,000 model portfolios following the newly launched website.
In addition, now models can submit their applications directly through the website, which is available for instant review by hiring agencies. The system enables saving model profiles as drafts while being worked upon. The profiles are made available to others when published. As IMG Models has five work locations, the Icreon team took care of localized instances for each global office with extensive tagging features to help avoid the duplication of workflows and assets sharing.
