“The Gig” Advert
Client: Headline Music

Hughes & Kettner is a German company producing some of the most impressive guitar amplification in the world.

When Headline Music took on the UK distributorship of the brand, they wanted to re-establish H&K not only as a more rock’n’roll entity than they had been perceived in the past, but also to highlight the ridiculous lengths the company goes to in testing products before shipping.

H&K has a unique valve testing machine (the old-fashioned glass tubes still go into the best guitar amps), but no interesting images of the VTI were available, so we built the ad around a young band on the road with an amp. Because it’s already been tested almost to destruction at H&K, no matter what other worries the band might have on the night, it won’t be that the amp is going to die…

Deliberately snapshot photography from Jordan McLachlan was worked into a grid for that chaotic-but-considered aesthetic and hey-presto, the high-tech and the hard rock come together perfectly.