At 4-foot-6 and 70 pounds, he is hardly an imposing Under Armour model, but 10-year-old Thomas Geyer of Havre de Grace loves sports and possesses just the right look.
Also, his feet are the perfect size.
"Attractive Boys (think UA ads) 10-12 years old — must be able to play baseball," said a local casting company's online announcement for an Under Armour photo shoot that Thomas' mother heard about from a co-worker. "Shoes — Size 4 (sample) is ideal, up to size 7 is doable."
Thomas, a baseball pitcher and shortstop, wears a size 4. Most important, he is a real athlete, fresh-faced and earnest. His ability to enthusiastically play — rather than just pretend — secured him a spot in the Under Armour photo promotions, which will highlight youth baseball cleats and are due to appear in sporting goods stores this spring.
The Baltimore-based sports apparel and footwear company wants its ads to look like real life, albeit a little cooler. It strives for an authentic feel partly by reaching out to homegrown talent and using area ball fields, warehouses, stadiums and street scenes.
Thomas joins a long list of local athletes — former Raven Ray Lewis is among the most prominent — and actors to earn roles in ads for fast-growing Under Armour, which now has more than $3 billion a year in sales.
Thomas' photo shoot occurred on a Columbia ball field in September.
"When he first got there, he was little intimidated," said his mother, Jodi Geyer, an accountant. "He played and did some posed shots. By the end, he was having a blast."
He got a $100 Under Armour gift certificate and was told he could keep the cleats he modeled. And the socks.
"It's not the best-paying job, but it's best for cocktail party conversation," said Betsy Royall of Taylor Royall, a Baltimore casting company that auditioned Thomas by talking to him about his baseball experiences as he tossed a ball around. "They get their five minutes of fame."
Long before it signed NFL quarterbacks Tom Brady and Cam Newton to endorsement deals, Under Armour commercials contained a muscular sort of local grit.
Producers turned a Canton parking garage into a dark, barren weight room for a 2003 ad starring Eric "Big E" Ogbogu, a former University of Maryland football player so sculpted that his form was cast into a mold to create in-store mannequins.
A subsequent ad featured the Terps football coaches bellowing at their players in low growls.
"All right, men, let's go!" shouts then-assistant coach Dave Sollazzo in the 2004 ad. "First-and-10 and they're in the Ace set. They're not going to throw the damn football, YOU GOT ME?"
Longtime Under Armour executives are nostalgic about the Ogbogu and Sollazzo commercials because they were the first to feature the "Protect this House" slogan.
"The one that started it all," said Steve Battista, senior vice president of brand creative for Under Armour, of the Ogbogu ad called "Breakdown."
Many of the featured players, including quarterback Brian Cummings and center Jamie Bragg, were teammates of Under Armour founder and CEO Kevin Plank at Maryland. Plank was a special teams player who graduated in 1996.
"We were still close enough to college days that we could find friends who were still playing, or just stopped playing to be in these spots where all the hits and workouts were real," Battista said. "In the beginning, there were a lot of former Maryland players doing it as favors or just for gear."
At the time, the company was still in its infancy. But then Stuart Scott, the ESPN "SportsCenter" anchor who recently died of cancer, adopted "Protect this House" as one of his catchphrases. The slogan was heard on playgrounds and used by Maryland and NFL teams (including the Ravens) during warm-ups.
The slogan's popularity helped propel Under Armour's rise. In 2014, it overtook Adidas in combined apparel and footwear sales to become the second-biggest sports brand in the United States behind Nike.
Under Armour's early ads "spoke to the authenticity of the brand," said Jonathan A. Jensen, an Ohio State University sports marketing instructor.
As the company evolves, it must assess what still works and what must change, Jensen said.
"Their product line has gotten so diverse," he said. "The sweaty football players in the warehouse is great for compression gear, but they've matured so much."
In recent years, the company has signed marquee professionals such as Brady, Newton, baseball's Bryce Harper and tennis player Andy Murray. Aiming to attract more women to the brand, Under Armour unveiled ads last year featuring ballet dancer Misty Copeland and Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen.
But Under Armour said it has no plans to write local athletes or actors out of its scripts. Company officials say area scenes simply feel genuine.
Under Armour has often used Producers, a Baltimore video production company, for its ads.
For shooting scenes, Under Armour has established relationships with the University of Maryland, Towson University, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and big indoor training facilities such as the Reaper's Den in Columbia.
In 2013, Lewis narrated and helped script a Baltimore-based commercial in which high school football players from Dunbar, St. Francis and Gilman race to practice on bikes, trains and in a pickup truck. A siren is heard and a helicopter hovers overhead.
Battista, who heads a 40-person creative team, said America already had a feel for rural Texas football, which was popularized in the "Friday Night Lights" book, movie and TV show. The Lewis-narrated ad was intended partly to depict the reality that many urban high schools lack football fields and players must "commute" to practice.
"This was inspired by being in the city," Battista said.
The ads' local connections are not always so easy to spot.
In a holiday-themed spot that debuted in November, a buff, tattooed Santa Claus is depicted scrambling to prepare for Christmas. Even savvy football fans might not have known that "Armour Claus" was played by former NFL player Randy White, one of Maryland's best-ever defensive linemen.
The ad, a collaboration with Dick's Sporting Goods, was cast by Taylor Royall and featured a number of area actors, including Fatima Quander and Kelly Holleman, both of Washington.
"Immediately you think, 'Why isn't this being shot in New York or L.A.?' and then you think, 'Oh, yes. Under Armour. Maryland,' " Holleman said.
The ad was shot in September at Under Armour's headquarters and at a Dick's store in Northern Virginia during the overnight hours because the store needed to open to customers at 8 a.m. It also featured Tony Cox, who appeared in the "Bad Santa" movie.
"It was really exciting to be working on a national commercial with a company that is from here," said Quander, who played an elf.
She didn't see the completed ad until it appeared on a television in a local bar.
"My friend pointed to it," Quander said. "I was like, 'Oh, my God, I really look like an elf.' I've made over $5,000 so far, and I'm saving to buy a used car. I had friends everywhere who said, 'I saw you.'"
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