More than meets the eye

on May 8, 2014 -
Automotive Advertising Part 1

While we were away, downing cold beers at the top of a mountain in Spain and stripping off our cycling ‘mankinis’ in Guernsey (heaven knows why we didn’t wait for some warmer weather) the latest adverts for Mitsubishi started to appear all over the place.

Of course I’d seen the finished product – we’d created the images after all but there’s a little behind the scenes action that those outside of the industry are unaware of. It’s this that makes me grab a magazine or newspaper to check to see if this secret has been revealed.

My fears are often calmed when I reassure myself that there’s nothing to see, that the public will move along oblivious to the stress I just faced. If it’s unnoticeable I’ve done my job well. If it’s glaringly obvious, I may as well hang up my hat. What is it?

BMW XDrive ‘All Wheels for All Weathers’ press ad released in January 2014

Size Matters

I love it when budding photographers tell me they want to work in advertising. Often I’ve been blown away by the talent I’ve seen and the ambition that sees them head steadily to the top. On the other side of the coin there’s also those that think it’s easy. That it’s just a case of snapping a car and sitting back while receiving the praise.

It’s not. This is one example of this. I’ve already told you about the weather conditions that can threaten our lives (flood in Africa), leave us waiting for days for the right shot and have us dangling from strange places. With the addition of CGI, a pic is not just a fluke, it’s not snapped and then produced, and it combines a variety of different elements to get it spot on.

Hell, it’s so complicated sometimes it even makes me realise why I did algebra at school 😉

Mitsubishi ASX 2014 'For Life's Great Adventures' ad

Mitsubishi ASX ‘For Life’s Great Adventures’ ad released April 2014

One Picture Split a Thousand Ways

It’s basically the cropping, the positioning and the composition. Is the image going to look good when it’s goes up to fit a billboard? Will the whole car look great on a DPS (double page spread) or for example will half of it be stapled or disappear in to the gutter?

Will a smaller thumbnail still capture the speed I wanted to convey and will there be enough ‘blank’ space for the slogan or text?

See I’ve got to consider the crops for the image, the copywriters have to consider the words. Can you imagine if a staple covered the letter ‘e’ in a phrase like “… most noteworthy car..” ?

This is usually all planned out before the shoot but it doesn’t make it any less nerve racking when the pics are finally published and the ads go live. I’m pleased to say though that every ad we saw during our cycling jolly was great, from billboard to lads mag, the crops worked perfectly. Result.

Now look at the ads because Size Matters in the immortal lines of some Renault press ads I worked on a few years back…