British Airways recreates famous NYC photo to mark the return of transatlantic travel

September 27, 2021

British Airways is marking the return of Brits to the United States with a tactical ad that cleverly recreates an iconic New York City photograph, Ad Age reports.

The creative—running in paid social, press, digital out-of-home, and on BA’s own channels—debuted two days after U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision ton Monday, September 20, to let vaccinated British visitors into the States starting in November, in an easing of coronavirus rules.

Although Americans have been able to visit the U.K. over the summer, there has been no reciprocal arrangement and the ruling paves the way for airlines to ramp up their transatlantic schedules.

WPP’s Team Horizon, run out of Ogilvy London, took the famous photograph “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper,” originally shot by Charles Clyde Ebbets during the construction of Rockefeller Center in the 1930s, and digitally altered it so that all the construction workers in the image appear to be looking up to the sky to a plane overhead. Photographer Adam Hinton was charged with matching the ad to the original image in painstaking detail.

“t doesn’t get any bigger or more iconic than the route to New York and the USA re-opening—it’s fantastic news after such a long wait to fly and we wanted to re-create an iconic image to match.” said Jules Chalkley, chief executive creative director at Team Horizon, in a statement.

Research contact: @adage

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