The Green Agency

Throughout the recently concluded Golden Age of Miami's modeling industry (1990-2000), other agencies, such as the near-legendary Michelle Pommier and Irene Marie, enjoyed more notoriety as "pioneers" of South Beach chic, while The Green Agency quietly labored at the hardest aspect of the business—forging client relationships that would endure though market hardships and industry recessions.

Since the company's founding in 1987, sisters Tammy and Lauren Green, both of whom emigrated to Miami during their college years after growing up in the entertainment business, have forged a unique reputation for professionalism, high ethical standards, and dogged determination in an often ego-driven and shallow trade.

Lauren began her career as an art director for a large New York advertising agency before relocating to Miami at age 20 and taking an art director's job with a Miami ad agency.

Meanwhile, Tammy earned a degree from the University of Miami film school and then worked on movies including 'Dirty Dancing' and 'Scarface.' At the same time, Lauren expanded her activities into casting, including several episodes of the infamous 'Miami Vice' and a lot of extra roles and bit parts in movies.

Once the casting agency began to take off, Lauren invited her sister, exhausted by the travel and grueling schedules of film production work, to join her. That was 15 years ago.

Today, after a decade and a half of riding the roller coaster that is South Beach, The Green Agency reigns as the dominant - and most diversified - player on the scene.

The sisters recently spoke of their current success and the strategies that helped them achieve it, as well as the future of Miami's modeling and talent industry.

What is the present state of affairs in the modeling industry on South Beach and how has The Green Agency managed to survive and prosper in the face of the market changes?
Tammy:  The Green Agency never placed its focus on European fashion print. We have always had a very diversified client base. We've been working in advertising, as well as lots of other venues for our clients. So, I think that while we've certainly seen a lot fewer photo crews shooting around, it hasn't really made much of an impact on The Green Agency.

Does that say that your business for 2002 will be up over 2001?
Tammy:  Yes, no question about it.

Was 2001 up over 2000?
Tammy:  I wish I could say that, but everybody's business went way down right after September 11, and that effect carried over for a while. But then we bounced back.

So, except for the dip after September 11, there has been nothing but steady progression in the growth of your business?
Tammy:  Yes.

That's really amazing, considering how much the other agencies complain about how little work there is, isn't it?
Tammy:  We think that business is really all about maintaining relationships with your clients, and we think that many of the agencies have always been ignoring the domestic market.

Elaborate on that a little bit in the context of what happened to the modeling market on South Beach over the past two seasons.
Lauren:  The other agencies made that old type of European fashion business their focus. We benefited from the Europeans as well when they were coming, but it wasn't our main focus.

Why does someone choose Miami as a location for production of a TV or print ad?
Lauren:  People come here and see that Miami is really the most beautiful place in the world! We have the most beautiful beaches in the world. I've traveled many, many places, and we have the best beaches and the best weather. When they see what we have and they realize it, they come. And for the same reasons, eventually the European fashion business will come back, too. It's just a matter of those who are strong enough to survive, and those who have good ethics and morals. That's what it's really about.

You believe that when you market yourself to the 'buzz,' it sort of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Elaborate on that a little bit - what South Beach collectively did to itself by only playing the 'buzz' or 'hot destination' card.
Tammy:  I think there were agencies that, when South Beach started to be a little bit less of a fashion arena, there was a lot of complaining that was going on in the press [such as] 'South Florida had lost its edge, had lost its cool.' And Lauren and I both feel that you have to look at a situation like that and say, 'how can you do business better and smarter, and make the experience of shooting in South Florida a better experience?' So, what we would do was call our clients who were thinking about shooting elsewhere, and we'd connect them with production-friendly hotels and restaurants, nightclubs and so on. And we'd open doors for those clients so that they were treated as special as they ever were before, giving them the opportunity to say 'I love shooting in South Florida. And I'm gonna tell my buddies to shoot in South Florida.' That's the opposite of saying, 'hey, the glass is half-empty and things are just getting worse.'

Define what you mean by production-friendly hotels and restaurants.
Tammy:  I don't necessarily mean cheaper rates for their people, although I've found that hotels and restaurants and nightclubs have certainly rethought some of the increases in price they had made. I think that today, if you make a phone call to a hotel and say, 'this is who is coming to town and this is what they're hoping to do. How can you work with me on this particular project?' I think the tourism industry as a whole is really looking to open its doors. I don't think they're looking to shut people out. And I think that's a lesson that we all learned the hard way, but I think it's a lesson we all really benefited from.

Do you agree with the fairly common assessment that South Beach got greedy and when [for example] the cost to shoot by the pool went through the roof, the clients said 'screw you, we're not going to pay that' and moved to Capetown, South Africa or wherever?
Lauren:  Yes, I think that's true. I think everyone got greedy. I think you have to remember that the hotels that they stayed in were horrible. They weren't redone, they weren't as clean and accommodating as they should have been. People want to stay in a nice place, they want to eat in a nice restaurant. They don't want to be charged exorbitant prices. I think that had a lot to do with it.

It seems the big mistake the South Beach modeling industry made was to think about it not from a modeling industry point of view, but from a 'we're the hot destination' point of view, which dictates a certain type of behavior - like greed. Do you agree?
Lauren:  We had film production and print production, and notoriously, when times are good they are very generous. They pay a lot of money. People make a lot of money. Models make a lot of money. When you look at the realities of life, do people make five thousand dollars a week? No. People make four hundred dollars a week, five hundred a week and they're happy with that. So, when you hear of a girl who's making five thousand dollars a day - I mean, come on. So, the hotels would charge more because everyone was making more. Everybody had a big budget. And when film and print production companies have money, they're very generous and they spend it. But when times get tough and they don't have money…it's like supply and demand. It's not something people don't know about.

Tammy:  I think that one of the most interesting things that Lauren and I have discovered is that because we're South Florida based people, we have lived here, grown up here, we have a tremendous network of contacts. And our clients had a lot of comfort in our level of contacts - meaning they may have a lesser budget to be working with, but they know if they call The Green Agency and they want to stay at a four-star, five-star hotel, eat out at the best restaurants, we can arrange all those things for them. That's part of what we do.

So, an element of your core business strategy is to do more for clients that just supply the bodies for a movie production or photo shoot.
Tammy:  Our business is supplying the bodies, but if a client calls us and says, 'I'm coming down for a shoot, where can you recommend that I stay?' - and 'I have fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars a day for a model,' whereas they used to have more than that - so they say, 'I don't want to spend a lot of money while I'm down there, so can you help me out?' And you know what? It's part of doing business better and smarter. It's about calling a contact that you have because we're so involved in the community and saying to them, 'we've got fives guys coming in from wherever, how can you help me?' And the response from the tourism industry is, 'this is how we can help you.'

But that's a generic 'customer service' mentality, not a 'modeling industry' mentality—correct?
Tammy:  Yes, that's correct—and it's very important.

Lauren:  We're Miami girls. We live here...this is home for us...we're not going anywhere. Our clients don't have to worry about us going away. The point is that we're not an agency that's not Miami-based. We're not coming in here as the Miami branch of an agency.

It's also important that we are the principals of the agency and not employees in one of the agency's offices around the world. We're here, we're part of everything that goes on. We stay at night until 9 or 10 o'clock, clients call us at home, because we care about our business.

But you also pride yourself on your staff.
Tammy:  We're not in the situation where every season, there are new people doing the booking. We have an excellent staff and a stable staff, with expertise and specialization in all the key areas. We have a very credible staff of booking agents. And the real beauty of it is that they all work very well together. As an example, a child booker who's supplying talent for a production will ask whether there's any need for adult talent, or any other kind of talent, and if there is, that booker will refer the client to his or her counterpart in another area. We don't have the kind of staff that always says, 'well, that's my client and only I am going to deal with my clients.'

Let's talk about the market in general. How has the type of work that has come here over the past two seasons changed from the European fashion business that established South Beach a modeling hot spot?
Tammy:  There are a lot of TV commercials that continue to shoot down here, especially in the winter months. We've had some tremendous movies here this past year. And while I know the movie business has slowed traffic and been somewhat controversial, it certainly has helped with the overall economy of Miami-Dade County.

What other factors caused us to lose the business we lost, particularly to Capetown, South Africa?
Lauren:  Miami got such bad press for a while, about all kinds of bad things happening, about things happening to tourists. Well, the report on South Africa is horrendous right now. There's a safety issue. So, when you have a daughter who's 15 or 16, or a boy for that matter, would you send them there?

How do you think the South Beach modeling and talent market will evolve over the next few years?
Tammy:  I think we need to improve the town as a whole in certain areas. I think that the State of Florida needs to explore production incentives with a bit more focus. I think the legislators need to understand that there's a very viable and very productive market in film and TV and advertising, and that it would be in the best interest of the state as a whole to promote it.

I'm the current chairperson of the Production Industry Council of Miami Beach, and there are several other organizations trying to promote the industry, such as Film Miami. At the moment, the music industry is also bringing in a lot of new opportunities. But I also think that pro-active marketing will help bring back some of the traditional clients that left.

How realistic do you think it is that the European fashion business will ever come back to South Beach - and why would they come back?
Lauren:  Because Miami is so beautiful. Because it's so easy to be here.

Tammy:  Let me tell you something - the children's catalog business is still here. It hasn't gone away. It's really as strong as ever. It's a seasonal market to some degree, but the German catalogs are shooting kids this week. We have two teams in from Korea that are shooting children. We have French, English. They're all still coming in, and the reason they're still coming in is that we have beautiful outdoorsy, healthy looking children. And that's so important. And they come back because it was easy and it worked. Then at some point they're going to come to shoot adult models and that bit by bit, some of that business will be back here.

That brings us back to another key element in your business strategy - diversification. Are any of the other South Beach agencies capable of delivering the range and diversity that you do?
Lauren:  I think we have the most well-rounded roster for everything. There are agencies that just do children, just do fashion, just do old people, just do fat people. We do it all.

You also book trade show convention models and send out actors and actresses for movie and TV roles?
Lauren:  Yes.

Tammy:  I think one of the things The Green Agency has accomplished is that we've been successful in lots of arenas. Right now, we've got a star on 'All My Children.' We have two women on an NBC Telemundo show that's going to be the Hispanic equivalent of a 'Friends.' It's the first big co-production being shot in Florida. We've got a girl who shot a pilot up in Boca Raton and we expect it to be picked up any day now. Do other agencies do it? Yeah, they do it. Do we do it really well? Yeah, we do it really well.

Were you always as diversified as you are now?
Tammy:  Yes.

So that was a key strategy right from the beginning 15 years ago?
Lauren:  Yes. We started with that strategy.

Why?
Lauren:  To be like the big New York agencies, right from the start. Both Tammy and I have backgrounds in TV, not the modeling industry, so we came into the business on a different wave length. The other agencies were interested in print, because Michelle Pommier and Irene Marie (two of the early pioneers in the South Beach modeling industry, along with the Green sisters) were models, so they were interested in print. We had a different business mentality.

What was South Beach like when you first opened in 1987?
Tammy:  You'd go and have dinner at the Cardozo Hotel on Ocean Drive, and everything else was boarded up. You were going into uncharted territory. 

Lauren:  That's another reason why when you ask why we've survived - we've been here. We know everybody on the beach, going back to the very beginning of the scene here. We used to go to The Strand every Friday night and see Bruce Weber hanging out with Niki Taylor.

How do you think the personality of the beach has changed over the past five years?
Tammy:  I think it's a lot more international in scope, and I for one enjoy that. We have a very diverse population, both ethnically and financially. It's a place where you can wear a lot of costumes, and explore any side of your personality. It's also a wonderful thing for children. I have two kids, and when we walk down Lincoln Road together and see all the different kinds of people from all over the world, my kids think that's the way it is everywhere in the world. And when we have people in front out of town, they walk around and it's like their heads are on swivels - 'oh, look at that,' and 'doesn't anybody here speak English?' My kids go, 'what do you mean?' because that's the world they live in.

It gives you a very worldly view. We do business in Spanish, French, Italian, and it's no big deal. I had a dinner party recently, and it turned out that everybody at the party was from a different country. But we all live here and do business here.

Lauren: I just thought of something else very important, too. Okay, the masses of foreign productions aren't here, but a lot of the big-name print German photographers - I can think of five as we speak - now have homes here, have married girls from here. So, are they still German photographers, or are they American photographers now?

Does the diversity of Miami have the same appeal to prospective clients that it does to your children?
Tammy:  I think that's one of the fun parts about taking a client who might be from the Midwest and having them eat at Puerto Sagua, one of our local landmark Cuban restaurants. Or the client wants to eat at Joe's Stone Crab and we say, 'no, wait, let's go to Garcia's on the Miami River,' another local landmark. You're showing them the world that you're living in, and for many of our clients, that's a real kick.

Lauren: I'll tell you another thing that's amazing. Our kids speak Spanish.

They learned to speak Spanish just by assimilation, from their day-to-day environment?
Lauren:  Yes. That's amazing, isn't it? And that brings up another important business point - the Latin business. Not everyone else has opened themselves as much to that part of the business as we have. We have a girl that just books Latin talent for print ads. You have to look at the market and see who's coming here and then go after the business that is available - and Latin business is a very important part of it, an area where we've done very well.

Tammy:  We have decided that because so many South American and Central American actors and actresses and models are coming to South Florida and making it their home because of the ease with which they can function here because of language and customs, it would only make sense for us to work in that area.

Do you think that will definitely be a growth area for you over the next few years?
Tammy:  Absolutely. There are more and more feature film productions that have a Hispanic bent to them are casting here. And we can present them with actors that have huge telenovela experience in the market.

How are you going to focus your growth plans over the next five years?
Lauren:  Ah, that's a secret. I think everyone is going to watch us during the next year or so and say, 'oh my God, they're still here,' and I think that we do have amazing plans in the works. I will say that because of our networking ability and everything, you're going to see some amazing things from The Green Agency.

Submission Guidelines for Models & Actors
All submissions to The Green Agency must be in the form of a professionally photographed and commercially produced comp card that includes vital statistics. If you are a working actor or model, please send a copy of your current resume. Materials can not be returned.

Mail to:
New Faces
The Green Agency
1329 Alton Road
Miami Beach, FL 33139

NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE.