Homeschool Dad Blog

Got our weekly Buyer’s Guide today, and had to laugh at the cover:

The “cover girl” for the eyewear company is none other than Kat Herding.

You probably still don’t understand why I found this so funny. You see, Kat Herding is seen as kind of a marketing “inside joke.” I believe she has become quite the celebrity, if only to a very closed crowd. Movie makers have the Wilhelm Scream (interesting wikipedia article). Marketing and advertising teams these days have Kat Herding.

You see, Kat Herding isn’t a real person.

Chris Locke, marketing guru, writer, blogger, and author (among other things) used stock photos of a model whose real first name is Sophie to create a persona to both mock and highlight the internet culture, in particular social marketing and other “Web 2.0″ technologies. (This photo of Chris is one of my favorites from is blog/zine/group EGR, when he was playing with his camera to get it to read book barcodes).

Here is a collection of her photos from iStockPhoto.

He created a company’s website (Kat Herding Media) and a myriad of profiles, postings, comments, and articles around the web in Kat’s name. Where the web was hip, Kat was there.

Chris has some screenshots on his portfolio page.

Her very name was a spoof of the famous “Cat Hearding” Superbowl commercial done by EDS. Funny how everyone’s seen the commercial but many can’t recall who it was for or more importantly - what exactly the company does.

Now, the exposure did wonders for Sophie’s modeling career I can imagine. Some of her photos from iStockpohoto are among the most downloaded.

Unfortunately having a guy like Chris Locke running wild around the web with your picture can be unsettling, to say the least (after all, his other persona is “RageBoy” and he tends to be a bit manic or unstable at times). So apparently things were said, complaints were registered, and Kat Herding is now officially “dead.” However, Sophie has becoming a marketing/internet superstar, even if only underground. She’s popular where it matters for a model - among media buying companies, ad designers, and marketers.

I’ve seen her face on University of Phoenix ads, numerous ads in Entrepreneur magazine, and now on the weekly shopper’s guide in my mailbox.

And now you know the story behind the face. If you see her, post a link to the ad in the comments section of this post.