The best crime shows and films make the viewer feel like more than just a passive witness to an investigation, but an integral part of it. Which means that, with the addition this fall of high-quality fare like Chicago Fire, The Fall and Bates Motel, French channel 13ème Rue (13th Street) has by definition re-established itself as one of the country’s best crime and suspense networks.

Fixing to cement its brand of hard-hitting drama in the collective mind of the public, the NBCUniversal-owned 13ème Rue took to the gritty urban streets, with a print campaign by BETC that is somehow both elegantly abstract and rigidly clinical. With an economical aesthetic, and ultra-spare copy imaginable, the resulting posters use a clean, concise before-and-after image effect to give passers-by something beautiful to look at while also mimicking the flow of an actual criminal investigation.


While alluding to the kind of police work found in 13ème Rue’s programming, the prints have a meta effect as well, acknowledging the network’s expertise in its subject matter in the clinical manner of the subject matter itself. One could imagine a character in a forensic lab constructing these prints, carefully taking out the tangled balls of “evidence” with a pair of tongs then painstakingly untangling them, pasting each shred of paper back into place to complete the ensuing image and solve the puzzle. And in fact that’s kind of how it all went down.

“We were digging for a way of coming up with a visual reference for the investigation process and found that using destroyed evidence was a cool way to go about it,” e-mailed BETC art director Alphons Conzen and copywriter Adrian Skenderovic, writing in tandem from the agency’s Paris office. These two creatives are obviously not detectives, but Conzen and Skenderovic still found a way to instill their production process with the absorbing problem-solving flair of a criminal case, ensuring their investigative spirit would bleed into the work.

Utilizing different types of cutting machines, Conzen and Skenderovic physically shredded select images from 13ème Rue programming, then delicately crumpled them into tangled balls of “evidence.” The ragged torn orbs that ensued have an abstract beauty to them, like works of art in a museum, but also show just enough of the still they were torn from to foreshadow what’s to come, if only in a subliminal way.

From there, Conzen and Skenderovic actually rebuilt the images, scrap by scrap, laying each shred of paper back into place to solve the “crime.” The end result is a “campaign with visuals which are both a metaphor for the kind of shows you see on 13eme Rue and the process that involves the viewer,” the duo said, “and [also] a metaphor for the mind in this conceptual, aesthetic way.”

Just like 13ème Rue programming, the prints “give you hints,” said Conzen and Skenderovic. “They keep you guessing and that’s what makes you want to watch this kind of show.”


CREDITS

Client: 13ème Rue/NBCUniversal

Brand Management: Fabien Saillant, Angelique Vaquie, Suzy Couchot

Agency: BETC

Agency Management: Christophe Neyret, Mathieu Laugier

Executive Creative Director: Stéphane Xiberras

Creative Director: Olivier Apers

Artistic Director: Alphons Conzen

Copywriter: Adrian Skenderovic

Photography: Leskennedys

Set Design: Benjamin Guilloneau

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