Goodness greatness

We take you to South Africa, where a Japanese photographer was hired to shoot a campaign to promote a stalwart Irish icon. To say this was an international effort would be a gross understatement. The results are punchy, bold ads for Guinness, trying to forge an emotional connection to the dark stout with African beer drinkers.

"There's a drop of greatness in every man," declares one of the ads, with the word "greatness" set in stenciled capital letters like the familiar Guinness logo. "There's greatness in heritage," says another.

The ads celebrate the common man with photos of men dressed for work or play ? a repairman, a deejay, a soccer player, a pilot, and so on. The images resemble coats of arms, with symbols of contemporary African culture flanking a bottle of Guinness in the center.

"We've used this as a vehicle to make the concept of Greatness real and tangible to every African man," says art buyer Julie Gardiner of Saatchi & Saatchi, Cape Town, South Africa. "The Coat of Arms is synonymous with pride and greatness. Greatness is the characteristic that is found in the drinker and his beer. ... We wanted something that appealed to African men's sense of pride, heritage and passion."

The ad firm hired photographer Naoto Ikeda after checking out his Web site and portfolio. Gardiner says it was a big plus that Ikeda does his own postproduction work.

Ikeda says he was nervous about organizing a complicated shoot in South Africa (where he had never traveled before) but says the Saatchi folks were great to work with. Some of the models used in the shots came from a talent agency and others were located through street casting. Ikeda did the shoots over a period of two days. "I photographed each model in multiple positions and poses," he says. "The postproduction work, while very time consuming, to me was nothing out of the ordinary." Gardiner says one of the challenges was keeping the lighting consistent for each model so they would match when the ads were composed digitally.

The final ads are running in print and at in-store and point-of-purchase displays across sub-Saharan Africa.