The creative idea was to visually show the confluence of business and politics. It needed to intrigue and reward and ultimately convey the message clearly. We investigated a number ways to execute the idea, looking at illustration and other photographic techniques, but finally settled on a style of combining two images to create a hybrid object.

To do this we enlisted the talents of Stephen McMennamy—given the brief, he found objects that symbolized business and politics, and could be combined together perfectly. For manufacturing we combined a construction dump truck and the Mount Rushmore landmark; for healthcare, the Capitol Building dome with a pharmaceutical pill; for global trade, a shipping container with The White House.

The end result was a series of visually striking images that grabbed viewers’ attention and made them do a double take, conveying the idea through the unique combination of elements.

Collaborating with Steven McMennamy, we first sketched potential visual concepts that paired iconic political imagery and imagery that strongly represented six distinct areas of business concern. We then used a mixture of stock photography and original photography to synthesize a new visual form that was always separated by a simple straight border. The elements were considered and positioned so as to always form a single visual object placed against complementary background colors which matched closely enough to feel cohesive, but were distinguishable enough to reveal the subtle straight border where the two distinct photographs meet. The resulting imagery was intended to transform jarringly unrelated objects into a single image cohesive enough to almost feel natural, but not quite.

The campaign launched in late April, reaching our millions of members and even more through single issue purchases.