Play it again, Sam (Advertising/Illustration project) 1995

This page contains the following sections:

• Artwork
• Project brief as given
• Description of solution

Artwork

Project brief as given

Produce finished visuals or a series of three 'campaign' advertisements for an organisation/product of your choice. Observe the following:

• the advertisements may have a competitive element but they must not be 'bargain basement', 'mail order' or 'cigarette cult style'
• they must each have pictorial content which, together with other elements, must be illustrated using marker or other approved media
• they must each carry a headline which, together with other elements, must continue a corporate flavour
• they must each include at least one paragraph of readable supporting body text

These advertisements are envisioned as full colour double page spreads in Sunday Supplement Magazines but full colour single page tabloid may be negotiable.

Description of solution

A product of particular recommending of mine at the time was the 'Clavinova' range of digital piano's produced by Yamaha. As a pianist myself, I was impressed by the quality of its sound and touch, especially compared to models by other leading manufactures for twice its price. I based the theme of an advertising campaign for this product on one of the great moments of Hollywood movie history, Casablanca (1942), in particular on pianist Sam (Dooley Wilson).

Here's the idea, two-fold.

Firstly, by illustrating famous cut-scenes from the movie, I portrayed Sam playing musical instruments other than a piano. As the Clavinova is marketed to audiences who would probably have been familiar with the movie, the sight would be a suprising one. The capability to play the sounds of other musical instruments, allows the unprecedented ability for a pianist of a 'digital' piano to be an orchestra.

Secondly, and more subtley, the deception in common thought that 'Play it again, Sam' was a quote from the film is equalled by the deception in sound and feel quality that the Clavinova is not a real piano. NB: all Rick (played by Humphrey Bogart) actually said was 'Play it'.

The media used was pencil (for fine illustration of the musical instruments), with one colour element: the Yamaha logo in red label for attentional effect.