Beyond celebrating the best and most innovative work our industry has to offer, the Tomorrow Awards set up to let everybody know and understand the how behind every winning and shortlisted campaign.
This time, our trip takes us to beautiful Brazil, where we catch up with LODUCCA.MPM‘s Guga Ketzer and Ana Luisa André, Creative Director and Creative Executive Producer to find out the inner works behind their shortlisted campaign : Ashtray
Tomorrow: One of the very interesting things about Ashtray is that fits quite well into the non-category aspect of the Tomorrow Awards. How would you describe the campaign to somebody that doesn’t work in advertising and hasn’t seen the case study video?
Guga: When they banned smoking in restaurants and bars all over Sao Paolo last year, the ashtrays lost their use.We tried to re-use them in some kind of artistic form and send a message through it. So you’ll be in a restaurant and notice a picture, or sculpture that’s made out of ashtrays and sends a message about the terrible effects smoking has.
The client was the Cancer Foundation. They’re the most important players in this since they did all the lobbying with the governors and they’re the ones who fought for the law to begin with.
Tomorrow: What was your initial meeting with this client like?
Guga: The idea came first came from us. The law obviously sparked a lot of debate in in newspapers and magazines and people were basically asking themselves “Why can’t I smoke anymore?”
So as we kept thinking about this, we came up with this idea and they thought it was great.
Ana Luisa: It was a very easy idea to push onto them because it was going to put their foundation at center stage. It’s something they’re always looking for since they don’t have too many resources to begin with. Plus, it was an idea that they loved and really connected with.
They received a lot of PR out of it. We launched the campaign on the same weekend that law went in effect so it was featured on many websites, magazines etc. It even ended up on the cover of one of the biggest Sao Paolo newspapers.
Tomorrow: And how many artists collaborated on this? What was the brief that was initially given to them?
Ana Luisa: There were 22 artists in total. We told them to do whatever they wanted. No brief. We just gave them ashtrays for them and let them roam completely free. That’s why we ended up with sculptures, photos, and so many other kinds of artistic expressions.
Guga: One thing that surprised us is how fast the restaurant and bar owners accepted our invitation. In less than two weeks we had everybody’s ashtrays and confirmation that they’d like to be part of it. The process was much longer with the artists though and the execution was sort of slow since we had to to give them enough time to do their thing.
It was a pro-bono campaign too, so we couldn’t put too much pressure on them and most of the time they had to fit that around their schedules.
Tomorrow: Have you thought of doing it outside Sao Paolo and in other Brazilian provinces? Why did you limit yourself when you first launched the campaign?
Guga: The thing is that the law was only for Sao Paolo. In Brazil, the laws are different depending on the part of the country you’re in. In Rio for instance, you can’t smoke anywhere, whereas they have reserved smoking areas in Porto Alegre. So it’s never exactly the same. The first place to introduce the ban was Sao Paolo though, which is by far the biggest city in Brazil.
Ana Luisa: We had some interest from other states after the campaign launched. The people from Porto Alegre and Mato Grosso inquired if they could do it there too, but they didn’t go with that because it was a lot of work for them and these type kind of things drain a lot of resources. You have to contact all the restaurants, and then get in touch with all the artists and follow up. Not everyone has got a time to do that.
You can see all the artists that collaborated on this project and their works right here.
August 24th, 2010 → 1:13 pm @ admin