A creative boom amidst economic gloom

A pan-European photoshoot, covering 4,000 miles and 4 seasons… on today’s marketing budgets? Impossible! Or is it…

We all know that justifying serious advertising outlay in today’s economic climate is no easy task. So what you need is a little ingenuity to ensure that tighter belts don’t mean buckling quality.

Take our recent project for Avon Tyres. They needed us to deliver imagery depicting four cars and two bikes, on location across Europe, from the Austrian Alps to the Scottish Highlands.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that we needed a budget more akin to a travel documentary than a tyre ad. And you’d certainly be forgiven for thinking it was time to ready our passports for a creative jolly.

In fact, you couldn’t be further from the truth.

Using photography shot no more than four miles from our Bristol base, we were able to recreate the conditions, environments and scenery of some of Europe’s most spectacular locations. Applying our conceptual creativity, art direction expertise, careful project management and considerable in-house Photoshop skills, we put together a stunning library of shots that showed the tyres very much in their element – no matter where that might actually be.

It’s certainly not the only example of lateral thinking for commercial reward. But, if you take a look at Avon's imagery, it’s proof positive that creative output need never play second fiddle to financial constraint.
 
Words – Luke Waterman
Pictures – Luke Waterman