Haigh & Hastings: Dangerous Men

Timepieces for Dangerous Men is a project with Haigh & Hastings Australia. The project focuses on capturing the rugged masculinity embodied by the brand's M2 Dive watch for use at the Sydney Film Festival 2024.

The aim is to portray the M2 Diver as a reflection of the demanding life style led by its consumers - a hard-wearing, sturdy, and spirited timepiece built for adventure.

The project seeks to communicate the watch's capability and connect emotionally with the consumer through an "uncut" and "rugged" creative approach to lifestyle photography.

Deliverables will include 18 multi-channel images alongside other marketing collateral and mock-ups demonstrating their applicability for commercial uses such as out-of-home advertising.

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Timepieces for Dangerous Men is a commercial lifestyle project with Gene Lilly of Haigh & Hastings Australia, a West Australian watch manufacturer. The project discovers themes of masculinity, ruggedness anda sense of the uncut embodied by the brand's M2 Dive watch. Reflected in the demanding lifestyles led by its consumers.

The project communicates the watch's values using semiotic markers to align the perceived lifestyle and branding of the M2 Diver emotionally with the consumer (Tufina Watches 2024) (Trifonas 2015).

The project utilises technical considerations and thematic connotations such as texture, movement, and lighting in conjunction with semiotic and cultural references to connect with consumers further.

The project has been revised since the original pitch, pivoting from clean studio-based product photography to lifestyle photography based on the client’s existing collateral centred around the idea of“Timepieces for Dangerous Men”.

This new "uncut" and "rugged" creative direction increased the project scope to include location shoots and talent, aiming to capture the watch in multiple dynamic action settings.

The final deliverables included 18 images in .tiff and .webp format to be used with existing brand collateral at the upcoming Sydney Film Festival across both physical and digital channels. 6 Mock-ups were also included to demonstrate the images' application

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The Timepieces for Dangerous Men project successfully captured the rugged masculinity embodied by Haigh & Hastings' M2 Dive watch. Through intentional consideration of semiotics, thematics and technical considerations, the project transitioned to a lifestyle genre with a cinematic aesthetic inspired by film. The images portray the watch as a reflection of the adventurous consumer and their demanding lifestyle creating connotative links through previously discussed considerations and cultural references.

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