A Thousand (Fewer) Flushes

There’s an interesting (Earth Day worthy!) visual story today over at SKAGGS, a design and branding firm based in New York and San Francisco. They’ve just finished up a campaign for TOTO’s High Efficiency toilets, and recall their planning and thought process on their blog.

An excerpt:

It took almost 2 months of planning, 1 trip from El Paso to Dallas and
back, 1,000 five-gallon water bottles, 3 trucks, 2 tractors, 1 buggy and
a whole lot of man (and woman) power to show that TOTO’s High
Efficiency toilets are all about saving water–lots of water. It’s proven that TOTO’s HETs
can save up to 24,655 gallons of water, in just 1 year. A fantastic
amount, but just how much is that visually? That was the first question
we asked ourselves and one that drove the concept behind the photoshoot.

We needed a large expanse, preferably one with a mountainous backdrop. The Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah are flooded every year, unbeknown to us. The next best thing?…The Salt
Flat just outside the Guadalupe Mountain National Park. The national park described the location as “An alligator sat on a sand
castle,” due to the contrast of the mountain backdrop on the Salt Flat.
We knew then that this would be the perfect location to shoot our 1,000
water bottles.

The photographer on this campaign was Tait Simpson,
and I gave him a shout to ask how it all went down. This was the
largest campaign Tait has worked on to date; there were 10-15 people on
set for the three day shoot. They shot images for three prints ads and
a number of pick up shots for the trade brochures. The ads, which have
not come out yet, will most likely run in architecture and interior
design trade magazine, because, you know, the average consumer isn’t
buying a high efficiency toilet (yet).

SKAGGS has a great behind-the-scenes flickr stream of the whole shoot. Here are some samples.

Set-up
in the desert (the bottles had to be repeatedly polished, as they kept
getting sandblasted). Simpson shot with a Hassie H2 and a P45 PhaseOne
Digital back. He
wanted the images to be large enough for the eventual trade show
signage that will be made.

Night Shot