san antonio convention and visitor’s bureau – double page magazine

executive creative director: craig mikes, art director: rob story, writers: george ellis, kathy farley, photography: chris chrisman, retouching: taisya kuzmenko

a year and a half in the making, this was an incredibly involved campaign that required a lot of research and planning to pull off. thank god for chris and his unbelievable team. the idea was to showcase as many of san antonio’s attractions as possible in three ads. finally, after several runs at trying to get it right, we had some comps that were ready to shoot. Chris came in and, along with vicki russell (agency producer), matthew slimmer (local producer) and robert leussen (chris’ studio manager), he wrangled this thing and made it happen. the fourth ad was an add-on by the client for the convention trade. it was destined to only run in trade publications that cater to meeting planners. photography aside, another important component of a campaign like this is the retouching. the artist behind the digital illusions was taisya kuzmenko. below each of the ads, you can see a short time lapse of taisya working her magic. finally, the stylist was the amazing bonnie markel. in tandem with the series of ads, we also created a website (unforgettablesa.com) that revisited each scene and allowed the viewer to click on the individual items to learn about what they represent. i put together a little film so you can see how it worked in my “digital” section. also in the “digital” section, i’ve included some of the films that we produced to accompany the text on the website.