iPod Silhouettes

Why it works

Black silhouettes dancing against vivid flat colour, with only one detail picked out: a white iPod and its white earphone cord. Art director Susan Alinsangan conceived the campaign after a man wearing an iPod gyrated across the street in front of her car, and with copywriter Tom Kraemer she boiled that moment down to its graphic essentials for outdoor and print. Photographer Matthew Welch shot real dancers moving to music they brought themselves, before the figures were turned into silhouettes and the players redrawn. Stripped of copy, features and even faces, the posters made the product readable from across the street, and anyone could imagine themselves inside the outline. It is studied as a case of art direction carrying the entire argument, and of a brand turning an accessory into a badge: the white earbuds became a status symbol in their own right, worn even by people who never bought the player. The campaign won gold at the 2004 Art Directors Club awards.