Page 6 - Capture Nov 21-Jan 22

Advertising
The Year in Review
Last year the word “unprecedented” was thrown around like a bag of lollies to describe a year in which stopping a disease halted so much of everything in life and work. We didn’t know then that COVID-19 wouldn’t be stopped and that it would dominate advertising photography this year as well. Candide McDonald reports.
2021 hasn’t been “unprecedented”; it has been a lot more of the same with a lot less acceptance of, and agreement about, how to manage an increasingly aggressive virus. Australian photographer Hugh Peachey describes it as “a cookie made with highs and lows that I’m desperately trying to eat, but it keeps crumbling.” For Christopher Tovo, it was “brutal”. For Steve Greenaway, “challenging”. For Troy Goodall, “full on”. Isamu Sawa “just rolled with the punches”. Italian photographer, Eolo Perfido’s synopsis is “science and culture will save the world”. “I was hospitalised for COVID in intensive care,” he adds, “so it was a complicated year that allowed me to understand even more how important civic sense and a cohesive community around important values such as science and culture are,” he states.
Australia was luckier than many countries. Lockdowns only crippled one side of the country, and even these were lifted for many months while the rest of the world’s were not. Advertising creation and production was given back its freedom early in the year in Australia and some overseas creative agencies and began to take advantage of this. Remote shooting in Australia became part of how work was made globally.
Integrated becomes everything
For the most part, advertising photography in 2021 continued a process that began a long time ago when digital overtook print and press, but opened new channels. Out-of-home advertising had a chequered year for an obvious reason – lockdowns stopped people moving around. Lockdowns gave television a new lease on life. Subscription TV services surged. Brands and agencies gave television advertising an enthusiastic response when many broadcasters began to launch schemes to subsidise smaller advertisers to allow them to make the jump to TV for the first time. Meanwhile, most major campaigns are now almost always fully integrated, meaning that while they lead with a TVC and/or online video, they will also include digital; social; sometimes radio; print or press; outdoor; in some cases, below the line; and from time to time, activations.
Tovo describes his work this year as an even mix. “I’ve done a lot of integrated campaigns where the media has been evenly spread across all platforms and done a couple where it’s been exclusively outdoor, which I love, purely because there seems to be a singular focus on why you’re there on the day.” A lot of Greenaway’s work has been part of integrated campaigns also. Most of it has been published online and social, with some in out-of-home – mostly bus shelters and billboards. Perfido’s work has been used
MAIN: Shot
for Australian Gas Networks. Campaign: Love Natural Gas. Agency: CHE Proximity.
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© HUGH PEACHEY