Media: Print, Outdoor

Mercedes-Benz was one of the first clients I worked on in my career. I was just a young buck at Merkley & Partners in NYC working on one of the most high profile car accounts across the globe. It was a great learning experience and cool brand to work on right out of the gates. And since this was back in the day, most of what I was working on as a junior was print. We did a shit ton of standard car ads that featured a beauty shot of the car and a clever headline – more than I could possibly showcase here. So I just wanted to share a few samples that I think were more conceptual and driven by the art direction.

Fun fact: For the Silver Arrow ad, there were only two cars in the world that had come off the production line at the time. One was booked at the LA car show and one was in Germany. Bingo. So we arranged for the car to be shipped by barge to Amsterdam, where our chosen photographer, Simon Warmer, resided. Once it arrived it was guarded overnight until it was delivered to Simon’s one-of-a-kind eggshell studio (literally a round white room that is big enough to house more than one vehicle). I managed to squeeze out a full week in Amsterdam for the production and post work we did to the image. What a trip! And boy, do I miss the old days of advertising and production.