Advertising has a funny way of reminding us that sometimes the best production value is no production value at all. HORNBACH’s latest campaign takes that idea rather literally, building a fully functioning film camera almost entirely from products available in its own stores.
Created by longstanding agency HeimatTBWA\ with directing collective The Glue Society, Tony Petersen Film and Sydney’s REVOLVER, the campaign turns DIY into something wonderfully surreal. The first film follows a man rowing across a sea of tall grass while a shark fin trails behind him. Another features a giant egg chased by a rooster, chased by a chef, chased by… a pile of grass. Naturally.
The Camera Is the Campaign
The footage looks deliberately rough, grainy and almost out of focus. Then the camera pulls back and reveals the enormous contraption responsible: part workshop experiment, part Heath Robinson invention, operated by a team of makers in jeans and beanies.
And it actually works.
Five young makers brought skills ranging from carpentry and metalworking to CAD, design and photography. They spent seven days at the HORNBACH Colentina store in Bucharest figuring out how to turn hardware-store products into filmmaking equipment. A magnifying glass became the lens. A water pipe helped hold it in place. A cement mixer moved the 35mm film, while an organic waste bin found a second life as a lens hood.
That sounds ridiculous. It also happens to be the point.
Ten Years in the Making
The idea had apparently been sitting in HeimatTBWA\ co-founder and CCO Guido Heffels’ proverbial bottom drawer for around a decade. Bringing it to life took another year and a half, with the team deliberately embracing the possibility that the camera might not work.
That spirit fits HORNBACH unusually well. The brand isn’t simply telling customers that creativity is possible. It is demonstrating the idea by making something impossible-looking with the same kind of hands-on problem solving its customers use every weekend.
The campaign includes 10 films for online, stores and train stations, alongside an 11-minute behind-the-scenes documentary. In an era of instant digital imagery, HORNBACH has chosen celluloid, physical materials and a bunch of people willing to see what happens.
Sometimes, the most convincing way to say “anything is possible” is to build the camera yourself.
That’s one way to develop a new angle. — Julian Vega
