Stockland Martel

When PDN selected this image shot by Nadav Kander…

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for its Photo Annual 2010, I thought it’d be interesting to get the story behind (no pun intended!) the campaign. So I sent John Kieselhorst—he’s now associate creative director at Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Boulder but worked on these ads when he was at David & Goliath in L.A.—some questions.

And he actually wrote back.

(Teasing you, John.)

Here’s the interview…

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Stockland Martel Blog: What was the Monte Carlo advertising like previous to this campaign? (I’m curious to know if these new ads mark a change of approach.)

John Kieselhorst: I should really start by saying that Las Vegas casino advertising as a whole is pretty awful. And against that backdrop, the Monte Carlo in particular had never really stood for much of anything in the past. If I were to sum them up in a tagline it would probably be “The Creamy Vanilla Center of Las Vegas.” The advertising was a hodge-podge of predictably “suitable” stock-like lifestyle photography and hoaky offers. The blandest of the bland. Imagery aside, the toughest part of the assignment was figuring out an ownable way for the Monte Carlo to stand out against the backdrop of Vegas.

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SMB: What was the brief for this campaign? And who wrote the punny, cheeky copy?

JK: The brief was meant to differentiate the Monte Carlo from their competition. To challenge the other luxury properties on the Strip (the Bellagios, City Centers, etc) on their own terms. David Angelo and I had penned the line “Feel Rich” as a brand promise. Which is pretty cheeky to begin with. We may not deliver the same luxury that the higher end places do, but you’re also not paying as much. Either way, you feel rich at the Monte Carlo.

The tagline and the lines all stemmed from this brief. We had two absolutely brilliant writers on the assignment, Aryan Aminzadeh and Greg Szmurlo. But it really became a free-for-all to see who could butcher the French language the worst. At one point before our first big presentation to the client there was a list of about 400 bastardized phonetically spelled french words and phrases tacked up to the wall by my desk. It was absolutely hilarious trying to figure out the best spellings for things and pick our favorites. We laughed for days and days. “SHAT TOE” and “CON OH SEWER” were two of my favorites that sadly never got approved.

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SMB: What were your criteria for the photography? And then how did you go about searching for a photographer?

JK: The criteria was pretty simple: the photography needed to be extremely high end and make the property look absolutely amazing. But in order for the lines to work, we needed to capture something else. The whole campaign rested on the juxtaposition of “high culture” luxury imagery against low brow language (and in that sense, I sincerely believe there has never been a smarter, more fitting print campaign done for Las Vegas). But in order to achieve that juxtaposition we needed to find the exactly wrong photographer for the job. Someone who understood that Vegas is a truly perverse place, and that the imagery we were there to create was about fusing together the sacred and the profane. Nadav is one of those rare photographers on earth who does this masterfully. He was also very gracious about our budget. [for reference images “MARE SEE BO KOO” and “DUH BOTCH OR EE” are excellent examples of this sacred profanity]
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SMB: Nadav doesn’t necessarily seem like an obvious choice for this job. I mean, sometimes I wonder if people in the ad community now think of him more in terms of fine art or fine portraiture (“Obama’s People”) as opposed to 1) an advertising photographer and 2) an ad photographer who has a sense of humor. Do you recall which images of his convinced you that he was the right choice?

JK: Funny enough, he shot President Obama in the Oval Office the day before we started shooting at the Monte Carlo. It was the last in the series of “Obama’s People,” and the cover of the NY Times Magazine. Which is very humbling when you’re about to shoot a bunch of debauched models from Vegas.

What I’ve always loved in Nadav’s work is his sense of photographic, artistic and cultural reference, on top of his sense of wit and an absolute mastery of lighting. I think that more than anything is what allows his work to parse between the commercial world and art world.

But to answer your question, there actually wasn’t anything in Nadav’s book that was remotely similar to what we wanted him to shoot. That’s what made him exactly wrong for the job. The shoot was an absolute pleasure to work on from beginning to end. Because it was a complete collaboration and an opportunity to make images as we went. Other than getting screamed at on the phone by my boss at the time for not shooting any of the scenes that we’d comped, we had an amazing experience creating this campaign together. I think more advertising should be made this way.

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SMB: Tell me a bit about the nuts and bolts of the job: where it was shot, how long you had to do it, the casting, the feel you were going for, other setups you might have tried, etc.

JK: The whole job was shot at the Monte Carlo Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, NV. I won’t bore you with the nitty gritty. The images reveal everything. There wasn’t much slight of hand involved. The most surprising shot we did was “RON DAY VOO.” It was taken looking out the window of one of the hotel rooms on an upper floor of the building, with the Vegas grid laid out below. The model in the shot is a reflection off the glass. To me, it reads like a scene from “Casino” that never made the final cut.

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SMB: Where and how were the ads displayed, and when did the campaign launch?

JK: The print campaign launched nationally in April or May of 2009. It’s also being used extensively in OOH.

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SMB: What would you have done differently?

JK: There was an incredible producer who made this whole job happen. Her name was Loni Weholt, and we all loved her dearly. She lost a battle with cancer earlier this year. And I wish that she were still alive. She was one of the coolest people on earth, and I feel very honored to have worked with her.

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Thanks for the interview, John!

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The full credits for the Monte Carlo campaign are as follows:

Agency: David&Goliath
CCO: David Angelo
ECD: Colin Jeffery
CD: John Kieselhorst
AD: John Kieselhorst and Todd Rone Parker
CW: Aryan Aminzadeh and Greg Szmurlo
Art Buyer: Andrea Mariash
Photographer: Nadav Kander

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Related:

• Nadav Kander, Kai-Uwe Gundlach, and David Drebin in PDN’s Photo Annual 2010

• A tribute to Loni Weholt

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