Who's the Genius Who Concepted this?

I see, to a degree, that you're multiplying "one" employee, and thus, it makes sense that it's a photoshop job on this one, composting multiple images of the same subject. But I have to ask - who styles these ads!

Everyone that I asked about this came away with the quizical "what were they thinking?" question on their minds!

Gizmodo did a piece on it, (you can see the full ad here) and now, apparently, a Vice President has been sent out to be the recipient of slings and arrows. Her statement on the subject:

Intel's intent of our ad titled "Multiply Computing Performance and Maximize the Power of Your Employees" was to convey the performance capabilities of our processors through the visual metaphor of a sprinter. We have used the visual of sprinters in the past successfully.

Unfortunately, our execution did not deliver our intended message and in fact proved to be insensitive and insulting. Upon recognizing this, we attempted to pull the ad from all publications but, unfortunately, we failed on one last media placement.

We are sorry and are working hard to make sure this doesn't happen again.

~ Nancy Bhagat Vice President, Director of Integrated Marketing

While I find it hard to believe that, AFTER the media placements had been sent out, they failed to catch only one. This could have been done better if the employees had been older white men, and the "boss" the same race, hispanic. There were other ways to execute this than the way it was.

As the photographer on the campaign, it would be your responsibility to obtain client approval on the final image before calling a wrap. Further, when you're involved in the casting, you should be sensitive to these issues - you are a part of a team concepting and dealing with the details on an ad. In the end, however, if the assignment was, say, $10,000 to produce for all your fees and expenses, and you seperately had a line item for two dozen insertions in various trade magazines over the course of a year, that rights package could be worth another $20,000 in licensing fees. However, if the client kills the campaign, unless your paperwork is written correctly, you may loose almost all of that additional revenue. Further, at that ad agency, you'll get little or no more work because you'll likely be known as the photographer that produced an ad that was critisized as being insensitive at best, and racist at worst, so you'll loose additional assignments from that firm down the road.

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