The photos for our ad already showed up on the
Macaframa site and
Prolly, so I guess we better break our silence.
Most companies will plan their advertisments out....do a bunch of concept sketches and ad copy, and have a long term plan of where and when to place the ads. You go get one (or two) idea approved by the boss. Proceed to scout locations, get bike builds specced and models ready. Go out and do the photo shoot based on the concepts. Lay everything out. Get final approval. The process is something like that.
Here's how we do it at Soma: We've been waiting for our guy
Jason to build up his new
Rush Special Edition for a few weeks now, so we could schedule a photo shoot. (He's been a little busy traveling as well with working with Maca.) Last week I heard he finally found an SG75 to finish off the build.
On Monday I texted him something to this effect, "I want to get a photo shoot going ASAP. Want to do an ad for Urban Velo." Funny thing is he misplaced his phone, so he never got the text.
But the next day I get a smart phone picture from him of his new Rush.
I contact Brad at Urban Velo to see when ad materials for the next ish. He says, "They are actually due today, but I can give you till Friday."
I say to myself "Dammit. We can't get a photo shoot and ad done before Friday. We got too much to do already."
So I resolved to do a quick n' dirty ad myself using the smart phone shot. It was nicely composed side shot of the bike against some graffiti art, but not too sharp though. I e-mailed a draft of an ad to Jason to look over. On Wednesday morning he calls me and says he wasn't feeling the copy I had written nor the photo he sent me and that he arranging an impromptu shoot this morning with his friend, Jayne. He promised she would send color corrected shots to me by mid-afternoon.
And in a few hours she DID -- to my surprise. The only thing that resembled professionalism in this process. The photos looked awesome, too, despite us not offering a lick of art direction. We didn't tell him how to build his bike or where to shoot. We probably would've suggested that he didn't slap so many stickers on it, but this is HIS bike, not ours. So we didn't sweat it; more legit we guess.
Julia (the other creative here) and I spent nearly the whole day working the photos into a variety of layouts. Finally finished about an hour ago. So despite our lack of planning, a misplaced phone, and that on Monday, we had absolutely nothing to work with -- everything seemed to come together OK.
Hope you get a kick out of this astonishing but true tale of working in the bike industry.
This is Jason's second Rush. He finds it a great frame for the type of rider he is...which fast, graceful, and a little insane. He's a stand out talent among fixed gear riders and we are glad he is riding a Soma.
One layout idea we were considering. Click to embiggen.
The actual UV ad we will keep under wraps. Photo by Jayne Liu
NO CASSETTES PART 12 JASON CLARY PART 2 from FonsecaFilms on Vimeo.
Jason doing what he does best from FonsecaFilms on Vimeo.
