Social (fashion) workers

@mythreads

A quick update on the Myer spring catalogue shoot, which rolled on today in Melbourne. Frockwriter mentioned yesterday that there was some confusion over the social media aspect of the campaign, with representatives of at least one model booked for the campaign, Cassi van den Dungen, surprised at the extent of the coverage. This morning frockwriter received an email from Myer rep Tim Evans, from the DT Digital agency, which is handling the campaign. Evans revealed that this was the first time that Myer had covered a campaign shoot in real time. He also wanted to clear up any “misunderstanding” over yesterday's post and insisted that all permissions were indeed sought from all the agencies – and duly granted. According to the van den Dungen camp, this is "absolutely not" correct. Confusing, it is. Update 11/06/10 @ 1.30pm. Van den Dungen's Melbourne agency, Cameron's, which negotiated the deal, claims that it did know about the social media coverage and did not have a problem with it. Work Agency, van den Dungen's mother agency in Sydney, which manages her career, has a different position.

To clarify one aspect of yesterday’s post, however, there was in fact only one party Tweeting from the set: Melbourne blogger and journalist Kat George, who writes for a variety of publications and websites, including The Vine, which is published by Fairfax Digital.

According to Tim Evans, George was hired to Tweet live from the shoot under Myer's Mythreads Twitter feed.

George also Tweeted from the shoot on her own Twitter feed.

She explains this here, here and here – although it’s not 100percent clear from this information that it’s a paid gig (George also points to several posts on Myer's Mythreads Facebook page, which refer to her "guest blogging" and being "on location" for the Myer catalogue shoot).

Frockwriter spoke to several other agents this afternoon about their approach to the burgeoning social media arena.

Several parties spoke of a new cardinal rule for models: do not post any information or images from jobs on social networking sites.

One agent recounted the story of a model who could not resist sharing her upcoming magazine cover on Facebook. Advanced to the model as a courtesy by the magazine, the cover was however swiftly dumped in favour of another image with a different model, following the indiscretion.

When it comes to commercial clients and the use of images/footage shot on location on jobs, one senior modelling industry figure conceded that social media has opened up a whole new “grey area” for the industry.

“Everyone has a camera on set now” they noted.