Craig Cutler shoots iShares global ad campaign for Ogilvy & Mather

Photo by Craig Cutler for iShares.

Ogilvy & Mather recently commissioned Craig Cutler to photograph a worldwide campaign for iShares whose tagline is “Every investor is unique. That’s why there’s iShares.” Craig’s challenge was to shoot portraits that captured a wide range of these “unique” personalities that could be read at a glance, and each person had to interact with the letter “i” to communicate the consistency of iShares despite the varied settings.

“I chose Craig because it’s a brand new launch campaign for a new client. We had picked a top director—Joe Pytka—for the TV spots, and we needed that much attention and quality on the print side as well,” explains creative director Sean Robertson. “I know that Craig’s not going to make a mistake. He’s going to deliver what he says he’s going to deliver—and more.”

Commercially, Craig is best known for his still life photos, but portraits have been an integral part of his personal work for years and are now playing a bigger role in his commissioned projects too. The iShares campaign is the second major portrait-based campaign that Craig has shot recently, following his motion portraits for Abercrombie & Fitch.

“I love Craig’s portrait work, and I’ve wanted to use him for portraits for a while,” says Robertson, with whom Craig first collaborated back in 1997 on a campaign for United Airlines. “That said, the iShares campaign is not strictly portrait work but a combination of portraits and some pretty serious prop-making.

“With the big green ‘i’ that you see in the print and TV ads, we’re trying to make a sticky element for the brand, trying to brand the ‘i’ in iShares to mean individual investing, not ‘Internet.’ So we needed someone who could build that prop it and bring it to life in a portrait setting.”

Production stills from Craig’s shoot.

Craig shot in numerous locations in Los Angeles over a four-day period, working with Robertson. “We shot pretty much everywhere—the locations were pretty varied,” says Robertson. The art buyer was Karen Rossiter.

The campaign launched in October in the U.S., Canada, and so far, the response has been enthusiastic. “The agency and the clients are extremely thrilled with the campaign and what it’s doing for the iShares brand,” says Robertson.