Dare is the name of the advertising campaign created for the McGill MBA program in 2019. For the 2022 fall edition, a digital-only campaign will be launched. The McGill Desautels marketing department requested a visual language update to portray the program's values in a post-COVID-19 world.
Year: 2022
Client: Körnelius Creative Agency
Art Direction: Maria Montiel
Graphic & Motion Design: Maria Montiel
Video & Photography: L'Agence Culte
The marketing department, along with the program executives were concerned that the imagery used in the last campaign had lost its boldness. After the COVID-19 pandemic, new challenges had surfaced, and the program values had to evolve to meet the post-pandemic demands. In co-creation with the client, the copywrittig team created a list of concepts to portray in the 2022 campaign. These concepts needed to be reflected in all the project deliverables and the language supporting them:
Humanity, Collaboration, Sustainability, Diversity, AI, Common good, Smart
All deliverables had to be developed using real McGill students as subject matter for portraits and campus life representation, they also had to be cohesive with the past campaign, and they had to follow the general school brand guidelines.
To come up with a solution I got familiar with the past campaing, the official school elements and the new concepts to ensure cohesiveness between campaigns. The team held visual exploration sessions where we discussed what daring looks like in 2022. These discussions became art direction proposals that were presented to the client using moodboards.
(First mood board)
In this concept, the imagery depicts finding solutions in unexpected places and technology. New versions of the word Dare are created, there's a complete color palette change. The Portraits are evenly illuminated complementing the subject's features. The body language is open, evoking humanity and collaboration.
(Second mood board)
In this concept, solemnity is evoked to create a sense of urgency. There's a darker color palette. The past brand element stay to create familiarity. Portaits have low key illumination. Body language is confrotnational and unapologetic. The imagery depicts problems in a very abstract way exploring a more abstract representation of them.
(Third mood board)
The client chose the second proposal but asked to make a few changes to better represent the program. The final art direction concept came up as a result of iterations with the client.
Moody photography was used to enhance the daring attitude of the students without coming across as frivolous. The cropping was opened to bring back humanity. During the shoot, the students were asked to have a natural yet fierce look to achieve authenticity.
The color palette was toned down using darker colors for backgrounds and lighter ones for text. This change made the campaign look sober, evoking deepness and real concern towards the world's issues.
The stock imagery depicts social and ambient issues, altough it was kept a bit abstract to intentionally not associate any specific communities with the situations we were asked to represent.
The final art direction concept came up as a result of iterations with the client. It was used as a reference across all the campaign deliverables.
Following the asks of from the brief, we had to work with real students to represent the program. We asked the university to organize a casting day where we got to meet some students, had their picture taken and made voice recordings. Since almost none of the students had professional experience in front of a camera, it was cricial to make sure they were able to follow instructions and protray differente emotions effectively.
During the casting day I was in charge of overseeing the photography process, choosing the best pictures and finding locations for the shooting day.
Before the shooting day, all the collaborators where briefed and the chosen students were asked to bring clothes that would match the new color palette. My task during the shooting day was to make sure all the team understood the art direction by overseing the content they were creating. I also made sure we got all the shots we needed to develop the deliverables latter on.
