CS 02
CANON

BEYOND
THE STILL

For almost a century, Canon had been
a leader in photography.

And for almost a decade they had relied on unremarkable commercials featuring Andre Agassi. (No offense, Andre!) Then GREY/NY hired me to help make the work better. Over the course of time, the work got better. But only marginally.

The big break happened when Canon introduced an SLR camera that also could shoot video. But what does a photography brand do when confronted with videography? For Canon, they wanted to bury it because they felt that videography was inferior to photography. My first challenge was not only to change their perception of videography, but to change their definition of photography. This led to a new category: Moving Photography. 

To express this new category, we hired one of the most famous photo & video journalists in the country: Pulitzer Prize winner, Vincent Laforet. What we created was a video story told in 10 chapters by 10 photographers. The twist? The only thing the photographer had to go on was a final still taken by the teller of the chapter before it. 

The result was 3 Cannes Lions, an Effie and a shortlist for the Academy Awards. More importantly, we saw Canon’s market share in digital SLRs increase from 17% to 55%.