Tech Brands at the Casting Call

There’s a particular event format that surfaces reliably around fashion weeks—the tech company that’s decided it wants to be a lifestyle brand, renting a concept store for a few days, hiring a photographer with a real portfolio, and inviting people to show up in their best clothes for a shoot that will end up on posters and banners and possibly a TV spot. Nokia ran exactly this kind of operation in Munich in early 2011, with photographer Yves Borgwardt behind the lens, looking for faces that could carry the idea of "a generation’s style" for a smartphone launch.

Street casting has its own strange logic—the idea that your particular combination of bone structure and a good jacket might be what a brand needs to look credible. Most of the time the results are forgettable advertising. The gap between forgettable and something more honest is entirely in whether the photographer is actually looking at people or just at the product.