By Mindy Charski
Photo by Matt Cobleigh
Discarded condoms, cigarette butts, and other rubbish wrapped up
like the “catch of the day." These images deliver the jolt to a new
pro-bono campaign intended to create awareness about litter and
pollution on beaches. The ads were created for the Surfrider
Foundation by Saatchi & Saatchi LA and shot by Matt
Cobleigh.
“We wanted to do something to create awareness about the problem of
pollution at beaches across the country,” says agency art director
Juan Bobillo. “We thought, ‘Let’s try to get [viewers] in a place
where they would never expect an environmental message to be
there.’”
The effort is designed to attract new members – including those who
aren’t regular beachgoers – to the nonprofit, which strives to
protect the world’s oceans, waves and beaches. The print ads follow
a stunt in which the Torrance, Calif.-based agency set up a booth
at a farmers' market and surprised people by displaying packages of
trash found on the shore.
The team collected the trash used displayed during the stunt and in
the print campaign during a cleanup in nearby Redondo Beach. They
then packaged some items together and gave the collections tasty
names like “Styrofoam Bites” and “Private Beach Mix” that appear on
realistic-looking food labels. Each tag also includes a short line
explaining how the contents relate to environmental problems as
well as a call to action.
Cobleigh, who is based in South Pasadena, Calif., has worked with
the agency before. He has a “simple, clean style of photography,”
Bobillo says, and the shop wanted the seven ads to look “very
clinical, very clean, and well lit, as if it’s a beauty shot of a
food tray.”
The impact of the images, Bobillo says, comes from the trash. “We
don’t have to make that look any worse than it is,” he says. “If
you shoot it beautifully, it will come across the way we want it
to.”
The right lighting was key. Cobleigh needed to “get nice highlights
here and there,” Bobillo says, adding that bad lighting on the
plastic wrap could actually hide the contents. Minimal retouching
was handled by Rocket Studio in Los Angeles.
The print work for the San Clemente, Calif.-based group broke in
May and is scheduled to continue into 2009. The images have
appeared as posters in the Los Angeles area and will run in
publications including
Fader, Fast Company, and
Wired. Translated executions are also appearing abroad.
Washed Up
Oct 28, 2008
By Mindy Charski
Discarded condoms, cigarette butts, and other rubbish wrapped up like the “catch of the day." These images deliver the jolt to a new pro-bono campaign intended to create awareness about litter and pollution on beaches. The ads were created for the Surfrider Foundation by Saatchi & Saatchi LA and shot by Matt Cobleigh.
“We wanted to do something to create awareness about the problem of pollution at beaches across the country,” says agency art director Juan Bobillo. “We thought, ‘Let’s try to get [viewers] in a place where they would never expect an environmental message to be there.’”
The effort is designed to attract new members – including those who aren’t regular beachgoers – to the nonprofit, which strives to protect the world’s oceans, waves and beaches. The print ads follow a stunt in which the Torrance, Calif.-based agency set up a booth at a farmers' market and surprised people by displaying packages of trash found on the shore.
The team collected the trash used displayed during the stunt and in the print campaign during a cleanup in nearby Redondo Beach. They then packaged some items together and gave the collections tasty names like “Styrofoam Bites” and “Private Beach Mix” that appear on realistic-looking food labels. Each tag also includes a short line explaining how the contents relate to environmental problems as well as a call to action.
Cobleigh, who is based in South Pasadena, Calif., has worked with the agency before. He has a “simple, clean style of photography,” Bobillo says, and the shop wanted the seven ads to look “very clinical, very clean, and well lit, as if it’s a beauty shot of a food tray.”
The impact of the images, Bobillo says, comes from the trash. “We don’t have to make that look any worse than it is,” he says. “If you shoot it beautifully, it will come across the way we want it to.”
The right lighting was key. Cobleigh needed to “get nice highlights here and there,” Bobillo says, adding that bad lighting on the plastic wrap could actually hide the contents. Minimal retouching was handled by Rocket Studio in Los Angeles.
The print work for the San Clemente, Calif.-based group broke in May and is scheduled to continue into 2009. The images have appeared as posters in the Los Angeles area and will run in publications including
Fader, Fast Company, and
Wired. Translated executions are also appearing abroad.
Ad agency creatives talk about what they've seen and how their business changed in '08.
