Art in motion.
An eight-piece art series for the U.S. debut of the Arteon, unveiled at a museum.
CLIENT
Volkswagen
ENGAGEMENT
Launch · Art series
AUDIENCE
Automotive press & consumers nationwide
THE IMPACT
2.1M
Launch-week impressions.
$0
In paid media.
30+
Editorial images, printed eight feet wide.
01 — THE CHALLENGE
Nearly total creative freedom, and nothing that looked like a catalog ad.
Volkswagen USA sent us one of the first Arteons in the country and asked for an art series around it, to be printed about eight feet long on archival paper and shown at a museum for the car's U.S. public debut. Automotive launches usually default to a catalog look and a paid media plan, but a flagship sedan entering a crowded segment has to be seen as a design object to earn a premium. The images had to look nothing like a car catalog campaign, and we had never printed this large outside of billboards. With viewers within inches of the prints, quality and color reproduction were crucial.
02 — THE RESULTS
Launching the first Arteon like a work of art.
We built the concept on 1980s synthwave music and art, with deep blues and reds to complement the Arteon's gold paint. That choice committed us to a distinctive point of view over a safe one, and to planning deeply saturated color before the shoot, not after it. We cast two prominent models and shot at two iconic Los Angeles locations, a drive-in studio that looked like Batman's lair and a notable downtown underpass. A Trichromatic camera handled long exposures in low light, captured in rapid succession, so the images were mostly made in camera. Because the debut happened in a museum rather than a showroom, the work earned its attention instead of buying it, and the series reached 2.1 million launch-week impressions with no paid media.
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