Let's imagine there was a company specializing in vegetable food products and they wanted to promote them. How would they advertise something as generic as vegetables? 

Well first they could come up with a good slogan. something that encourages people to eat more veggies. It could be something like "More vegetables one day a week means 52 better days in a year." That's very good. 

But how would they make their ad stand out from the crowds of tomatoes, salads and peppers that are the seen in vegetable commercials? They know good copy isn't enough. So what do they do to catch people's attention visually?

They choose body painting. 

APETIT is the company we just imagined. They trusted the idea of their marketing partner Hasan & Partners and took a step in creating something totally different to what you are used to seeing in TV commercials, let alone in vegetable promotions. And I'm so happy and proud all of them trusted me to be the creator for the challenging body painting illusions.

I was contacted by the director Aleksi Koskinen from Hasan & Partners right in the beginning of the project. I stepped in from the beginning of the design phase which was essential, as my knowledge on body painting and it's possibilities helped in mapping out the final visual goal. The vegetables to be created were our design choices and naturally then approved by the client. 

I was commissioned to create the designs and sketches for the paintings. After the actual painting days I also got to view the final images and film and give my proof on the edits. I really love it that the client respected my wish to keep the paintings as natural as possible with minimum edits - the beauty of body painting lies in it's authenticity.

I also used my contact network and booked the most suitable models for this project. All of them were dancers and former athletes who are used to working with their bodies and have strength to hold poses that look easy, but in real life feel totally opposite. 

My personal challenge in this was to create multi-body illusions which are one of the most difficult forms of body painting. At the same time I wanted to create something that would blow everyone's mind away and meet (preferably exceed) my client's expectations. I never do less than what I can, instead I always try to give more. I'm so grateful for this project, and it feels so amazing to get this feedback afterwards:

Links about the campaign:

• ​Apetit-website
• ​Marmai: Apetit valitsi hasanin uudeksi kumppanikseen "Uskaltaisin väittää, että tämä kampanja erottuu" 6.4.2018

That is exactly what Valio did. Valio is a Finnish dairy giant, whose super idea to promote their new flavoured fromage frais was wrapped around body painting. The advertising agency Bob the Robot contacted me for the campaign and asked me to help create the visuals promoting strawberry and vanilla. What a fun job and an amazing team of professionals, and the outcome I think certainly shows creativity, clever copy combined with matching paintings. Awesome!

The ads were showing in the centres of cities and towns around Finland. The grey weather was certainly brightened up by these posters!
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Photos: Riina Laine
​For video (scroll down)
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The most common question people ask me when they hear I am a body painter, is what body painting can be used for. The list is almost endless - performances, events, parties, fashion, trade shows, music videos, photoshoots etc. On this post I'm now concentrating on one of the most interesting uses of body painting - advertising and marketing. 

I'll start with this example.

​Body Crash created by my collegue Emma Hack for Motor Accident Commission (MAC) of South Australia.

What do you think? In my opinion this is by far the best advertisement I have come across that uses body painting. It is clever and the message is obvious. Emma has done an amazing job in this, these kind of multi-body installations are very difficult to create. I've never done one but I hope I will get a chance one day.
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This ad is a perfect example of the effectiveness of body art. The painting can be done on one body or 15, it can be beautiful, shocking, objective or abstract, and the reason why it's great in advertising - It's art used as a messenger within a cleverly built concept.
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Why does it work so well?
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​There are plenty of other ways to get the message through, right? It's very simple - body painting always attracts attention. Yeah okay, but why? 

Us humans we are naturally intrested in the human body. We all understand human body - we all have one ourselves. We are also interested in art, one way or the other. So when these two interests are combined, that's where the magic happens. When the human body is dressed in paint, it becomes an art form that is easy to comprehend, and what makes it exceptionally interesting to look at is that the canvas is like you. Be it a still ad, a video commercial or a live promotion, body painting catches our eyes. It's fascinating and it often tricks the eye. It's art that breaths.
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The Process

​Body painting artist is usually booked to the project very early on. Often the idea and the concept is already done, but as there are many things to consider when using body painting, I recommend idea swapping and open & honest conversations with the artist and other team members before putting the stamp on the final goal.

​Advertising projects focus on delivering the best result for the client. Therefore depending on the project, sometimes the body painting artist can have more responsibility in the artistic direction of the process and sometimes they work more as the technician. All artists are different too so it's good to do some research and look for the one you feel would best suit your project. If you are unsure about how to use body painting in your campaign, contact the artist beforehand and ask questions. We are all passionate about our work and always willing to tell more about it and discuss ideas.

This was a non-smoking campaign for Pfizer in Nov 2014 and Jul 2015. The goal was to show the dangers of smoking in a new and shivering way in which the visuality and the storytelling quality were the keys in creating high impact.

This campaign has now been praised internationally - the campaign won Silver Stevie Award at the 2015 International Business awards and it received Honorary Recognition of Excellence at 2015 Pharmaceutical Information Act of the Year. It was also short-listed at SABRE Awards EMEA 2015 and IPRA Golden World Awards.

This campaign received plenty of media attention and is the most commented/liked on my social media too.

​These pictures for shoe designer Minna Parikka show how perfectly body painting can be used within fashion advertising to support the original designs. This campaign has been shared in numerous blogs around the world and it received the Golden Prize at Vuoden Huiput (The Best of Finnish Advertising and Design competition).

Efima Oy is a rapidly growing  IT company that develops and implements digital business and financial management processes. Their visual look has always been different than usually in their industry. Since 2010 they had animals representing the strengths and the features, the characteristics and the values of their company. With their rapid growth, the visual look also needed renewing. Nordenswan & Siirilä designed the natural evolution to them - Efima Evolution.

This project produced the company the branding visuals for their website, brochures, press materials, in-house & client magazine as well as their job advertisements. Combined with great copywriting the company stands out in their business field like no-one else. 

Taiga Colors is a Finnish design studio specialized in pattern design. Taiga Colors has its own bag and interior design collection, and a flagship store in Helsinki. They also provide custom designed corporate gifts and interior design products for companies and public sector. Taiga Colors commissioned this painting to promote and celebrate their 'Daydream' print. The project combined a live body painting session for the visitors to watch and a photoshoot to capture the image for their social media campaign. Mr Dream invited people in the flagship store very successfully and the project itself works as another great example of collaborations between different design arts.

At the end of last year I got a body painting request from advertising agency Nordenswan & Siirilä. The brief was to create body painting on acrobats for the new visual look of an IT company. At first I thought "Really?" and immediately after that "REALLY!". What an amazing idea. Little did I know at the time how amazing though.

EFIMA EVOLUTION

Efima is an IT company that develops and implements digital business and financial management processes. Their customer base comprises large and mid-sized organizations from all industries.
Efima has grown in five years from four people to almost a hundred and has become a sought-after workplace.

Efima's visual look has always been different than usually in their industry. Since 2010 they had animals representing the strengths and features, the characteristics and the values of their company. With their rapid growth, the visual look also needed renewing. So it was the natural evolution - Efima Evolution.

ARTISTIC TEAM WORK

As a body painting artist I loved this project. The art directors had very good ideas and sketches for the paintings, but I was also given freedom to execute them as I thought would work best. There were many factors to take into consideration when planning the paintings - the poses of the acrobats, how they would be posing together and seperately, which parts of the body would be prone to rubbing and sweating. All the poses were planned prior to the shooting days and the paintings carefully designed to fit those.

In addition to the design the colours needed to match too. It took a little while to come up with good mixes to get the tones right, but it proved I always need to take those colours with me that I think I won't need! ;) You never know when they might come in handy...!

This was by far one of the best teams I have worked with.
The team of different artistic skills put together, listening to each other, supporting each other and creating together a mutual vision was something that not only inspired me, but the process itself reflected the values and the ways our client Efima likes to work. Coincidence? :D