In 2003, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners created “You,” an emotional ad campaign for Hewlett-Packard in which pieces of images freeze on screen and become floating still pictures, all to the soundtrack of the Cure’s hit song “Pictures of You.” The following year, HP commissioned French director Francois Vogel to create a similar campaign, but this time the focus was on printing pictures rather than taking them. Vogel set up a camera and shot himself putting empty frames around his head an neck. Then, using Adobe After Effects, he transformed the video to make it seem as though he was creating still photos out of thin air. All this to the tune of the upbeat Kinks song “Picture Book.”
Umpteen evolutions later, and it’s still proving to be a successful vehicle for marketing campaigns. One variation on the original theme that recently caught my eye was the “Vinyl Never Dies” series by Kitchen, an agency based out of Madrid. Designed for client FNAC, which looks to be a foreign version of Amazon.com, the print ads feature regular people positioned in such a way that they become a part of classic album covers featuring the likes of Elvis, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison.
