Behind the scenes: Modeling – my lessons learned & how I became the face of a cereal brand

I decided to write about the modeling topic at the beginning of the blog because this is a part of me, that stays in contrast to my business background. People during my studies time or now in business often ask me how it is to work as a model. How a commercial or a campaign is created and how I manage both “worlds”. My business career, but also the work as a model are very important parts of my life and helped me to become the person I am now.
That’s why I want to share my experiences and lessons learned with you, that I gathered from the work as a model. In my blog post about the modern workplace at my employer Microsoft, I wrote about the flexible working style and the so-called: Work-life-flow. This kind of working enables me to manage the business and model life, that I live.

But how has everything started?

My first modeling jobs I got when I was 15 years old. At this time dancing was the most important thing in my life and I was discovered by a friend of my dancing teacher, who had a small modeling agency in the south of Germany. I started with small fashion shows in shopping malls, wedding fairs, and different fashion events. Because of the stage experiences from dancing, I felt very comfortable at catwalks from the beginning and realized how much fun I had in entertaining people. Jobs like small, but also big shootings (f.e. Car2Go campaign), video clip dancing and small commercials (f.e. local driving school cinema spots) followed in this years, when I was in school.

By moving to Munich in 2010, where I began my Bachelor studies at Munich Business School, I got a contract from my also current agency, Instyle Models. From this time, I had a lot of job bookings in the commercial field, like Adidas catalogs, a worldwide campaign for MAN trucks, OTTO online shop, Triumph Lingerie, ALDI Süd, MIGROS Switzerland, TARGO Bank etc. One of the jobs, who pushed me and enabled me a lot of other great and big campaigns, was the campaign for a German cereal brand, Kölln. I became the face of the cereal packages, which you can find in nearly every shopping center. It´s funny, when people ask you, if you are the woman on their cereal package, they have on their table at breakfast.

What I love in the model job, is the fact that you often have the opportunity to play a certain role, for example of a mum with children in a commercial, or in one of my latest jobs I had to play a stewardess. These kind of jobs, I really love to do. It´s like acting and you can try things out.

When I write these experiences and my references down, it feels like everything sounds great. But believe me guys, it´s not. The modeling scene, in which I am currently working for 13 years, taught me to become harder and not taking things too emotional. I also had experiences, where I didn’t get jobs, because of not tall and thin enough. For a super young girl, it was hard to get such feedback, but when I look back now, it strengthened me a lot. You can not be everybody’s darling and not everybody will like you or you are not everybody’s type. But that’s ok and totally human. When I started to see only the positive things of what happened to me and my personal strengths in terms of character and look, everything gets so much easier, me happier and I also got much more jobs. Positive energy has such a huge influence on all the things around you! Be thankful and grateful for what you have and for who you are.
That was actually one of my key-lessons-learned and its funny because I got these tips much earlier from the more experienced woman, but actually, you have to go through on your own to understand their real meaning. It´s like always in life:)

So I began to focus on my strengths and not trying to put energy in the wrong or for me, not suitable fields. In my case, my strengths are definitely are in the field of advertisement, commercial and video shoots, where clients are looking for natural, sporty and healthy models to represent their brand. By doing that, I find myself much more comfortable and in the right place. And this attitude, you can reflect on every part of your life.
Focus on your talents and strengthen your strengths! This is what I would love to give you as advice and hope, that you implement this way of thinking and acting in your life.

Here are some impressions of the commercial jobs, I did during the last years.