VAULT 49

10 E 23rd Street, Fifth Floor
New York, NY 10010, USA

Brief
Vault49 was commissioned by M&C Saatchi to progress Transport for London's (TFL) ongoing campaign to deter fare evaders on the bus and underground network.

The challenge was to connect with commuters in London transport's saturated media environment, and to freshly communicate a long-standing message.

Solution
Commuter advertising is unique since it can captivate viewer attention for long periods of time. This is as an opportunity and a challenge that we sought to exploit by delivering a visual solution that had immediate 'arresting' appeal (excuse the pun) yet also had enough subtlety and depth to reward lengthy viewing.

The concept behind the art is that anybody around you could be a potential ticket inspector, and there is no way to tell them apart from the general public. We felt the best way to capture this photographically was to establish a street-shoot, and we set this up in the heart of SoHo, New York to ensure good foot traffic and also a receptive audience to the campaign.

Vault49 assembled a dream-team of creative talent to work alongside our studio on this brief, with typography by Craig Ward and photography by
Steve Brahms.

The resulting art is successful not only because the bold typographic approach delivers the core message early, but also because of the efforts we went to in ensuring the secondary read of photography feels natural and far from a contrived model shoot.