Tearsheet: Not a Moment Without Comedy

So our person-in-the-know this week is Åsk Wäppling. She is the Art Director (in addition to main muse and CEO) of Adland the commercial archive. So she looks at ads all day. In fact, she originally suggested a totally different ad campaign for this column, but couldn’t stop talking about this photographer Arthur Mebius; she wrote me back twice to sing his praises. So I decided to take a look at this fellow’s site, and I thought it was pretty fun. Here’s what Åsk says about him:

“I’m currently carrying a huge torch for all of Arthur Mebius’ images because not only does he get a clean crisp shot, often with a lot of humor, but the light and everything is just so perfect to make each image almost like hyperreal cartoons. I love all of them, and he has – so far – never let me down in any campaign that he has shot.”

OK, so that’s a pretty good review. She likes ALL of his campaigns? Hard to please as a photographer all the time, when your clients are all over the map. I have to say though, I like most of them as well. So this week Tearsheet will focus on several campaigns from the same photographer. I think it’s interesting to see how a style can carry through. We are, however, going to highlight the Comedy Central ads, since they were the only ones I could find with the final copy added. All of the other ad images Mebius has shot appear on his website as only the image, not the ad mock-up. Which in itself is interesting. Maybe you can add your own tagline, a la the New Yorker cartoon caption contest.

So here’s the Comedy Central campaign:

Agency: Kempertrautmann GmbH, Hamburg
Creative Directors: Daniel Ernsting (CW), Frank Bannöhr (AD)
Art Director: Axel Schilling, Marita Locmele
Copywriter: Christian Soldatke
Graphics: Tim Belser
Photographer: Arthur Mebius
Account Director: Peter Matz

Awards:
ADC Germany | Bronze, 2x Merit
Montreux Awards | 2x Finalist
New York Festival | World Silver Medal & Finalist
ADC Europe | 2x Nomination
Cresta Awards | Shortlist
ADC Young Creatives | Merit
Eurobest | Bronze
Epica Awards | Silver

OK, so I do like the clean imagery. The birth image is my favorite, I think. I was a little worried  people might take *offense at these images, but Mebius says no. He also says other things:

“The concepts came from the agency, we shot a total of five. I don’t think anyone was offended by the humor. Although we did not have a large budget we managed to get good locations and models, we also used some crew, and it was a lot of fun to make.”

I also complemented Mebius on his lighting, and asked him how he generally lit a scene (although obviously people do different things all the time, but he humored me):

“At almost every shoot I try to make some special light but finally it always ends in a natural feeling with soft shadows. I guess that’s my light. Most of the time I use strobe.
The Comedy series was one of the last shoots I did on 4×5 E6 film, now I shoot only digital.”

That’s pretty interesting, I wouldn’t have pegged these for large-format.

Mebius is a pretty young photographer: he started off assisting for Marcel van der Vlugt
after graduating from The Royal Academy of Art in the Hague in 1996. He’s been shooting on his own for only ten years. He works mostly for Dutch advertisement agencies, but just moved into the German and Swiss markets. But he’s thinking about crossing the pond.

I asked whether the humor he so often employs has become his “thing”, and whether that’s what he’s repeatedly hired to do. And he says yes:

“I guess it has become my cache. I like most to
shoot a picture with humor, a little story about the relationship between
individuals. The moment when something has become clear in a certain
situation and people have to react to what happened. It is about this
short moment when the one  reacting (someone in the picture, or even the
viewer) is still in the moment of deciding. So it is not clear how it
will end.”

A decisive moment of sorts, eh?

My favorite Mebius campaign is this Heineken one. It’s just hilarious. I asked about it in particular, too. Apparently they timed the ad to appear on Father’s Day, which is pretty funny.
Sort of reminds me of the Canadian Club notion. Mebius says a lot of credit goes to the stylists on this one, because they had to create the ’60s feel and the contemporary feel both on the same set, due to budget constraints.

Client:Heineken
Agency: TBWA\Neboko

See more Mebius campaigns below. Åsk Wäppling likes the Fortis ASR ad best (the butcher about to lose some digits) saying it “makes her laugh every time.”

Which do you like best?

Client: Talpa
Agency: TBWA\Neboko

Client: Dutch Army
Agency: Publicis Amsterdam

Client: Generali
Agency: UBACHSWISBRUN/JWT

Client: Fortis ASR
Agency: Selmore

Client: Lamborghini
Agency: Philippundkeuntje

See more Mebius imagery here. His personal work is interesting, too. It has that same sharp quality.