The task was to launch the new thin, light and black Microsoft Surface Pro 6, which was designed to fade into the background, allowing you to focus on your work. How do you draw attention to a product that’s designed to not be noticed?

We used a medium that, like the product itself, is meant to disappear – shadows. We created a series of posters that, unlike traditional bright and flashy posters, existed only as shadows, moving slowly across walls in London with the movement of the sun. By using shadows as a medium, the posters could appear across a range of backgrounds. Each one essentially became a new artwork – from traditional brick walls to interesting street art murals.

This represents the first time that shadows have been used as an OOH poster medium, creating a campaign that’s simultaneously high-impact (the unusual nature of the posters draws the eyes of passers-by) yet low-impact, in that the posters naturally disappear without blighting the landscape. Perhaps, in time, shadows posters can become a new media format sold to advertisers who want to communicate a message, but not at the cost of becoming an eyesore.

Our target audience was creative professionals, so the Shadow Posters appeared in 'creative' neighbourhoods of London such as Shoreditch and Peckham.

The execution consisted of a series of 3m x 2m die-cut templates, which were angled to catch the sun, projecting Shadow Posters on surfaces including brick walls, street art murals and garage doors in London. These would slightly stretch and distort along with the movement of the sun, eventually disappearing entirely.

- 9.38 million total impressions for the campaign

- 51% of Surface Pro 6 sales were for the matte black variant