New horizons

Print advertising for the pharmaceutical industry tends to look pretty generic: either tightly cropped black-and-white portraits usually of senior citizens with a product shot, or a stock image of a couple walking along the beach holding hands. There are, however, ocassional campaigns that break from this formula. A case in point is this campaign for a product called Spiriva created by the agency The Cementworks and photographed by New York based Howard Berman.
In each of the ads, three generations of one family are in the foreground, engaged in bonding activities such as ice-skating or go carting. In the background is a seemingly endless horizon.
These hyper-real and boldly colored ads combined models with scaled down sets designed by the photographer and then merged in post-production."The job was assigned with loosely defined parameters as to style and look," says Berman."The client was, however, specific on one need: to produce an image that communicated their objectives but not with the look and feel of typical pharmaceutical advertising."
The product, co-produced by Pfizer and the German company Boehringer Ingelheim, is a type of inhaler that can be used to help alleviate airway narrowing, a symptom associated with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).
"We wanted it to be very much about the people,"says Linda Stryker art director at The Cementworks. "The three generations and the rolling landscapes and horizons imply that with this drug you can regain and sustain a better quality of life."
Stryker adds that Berman was hired for the job because of a campaign that he had done for the New York Lottery. "Although that campaign was very different and more light hearted," Stryker says, "we were really captivated by that great look that he has and we wanted to apply it to this campaign."
For Spriva, Berman worked closely with his retoucher, Bob Bowen, exploring different techniques and possible locations to imagine this hyper-real work, before deciding that building sets from scratch and then compositing it with the subjects in post was the best option. Everything was shot digitally on a Hasselblad with a Sinar back."To have a client request something different and to award the assignment on the strength of concepts in my portfolio is a great assignment,"says Berman.
The ad featured shown here is appearing in various medical trade magazines, while the other three images are set to be used by the company for its internal and external communications.