---Reposting this because Typepad is giving me fits-----sigh----
The original photo shoot was done in a loft in downtown NYC. 
I was not there, so all I can tell you is what I was told by the agency and marketing team that was there.
Evidently, the loft was a little cold, but nobody noticed it and certainly not Jamil. She went into one of the bedrooms and put on a white t-shirt and came out for the photo shoot. Of course, she was gorgeous but nobody noticed anything out of the ordinary. That's is until a few weeks later.
The online team waited anxiously for the photos because we were getting squeezed on the back end for time. The photos went over to Modem Media and then after a week I had a creative review with them. The mood was a little tense because we were running out of time to hit our launch date to coincide with the offline campaign. Right after this call, I had to review the creatives with my boss, Brenda T. who was head of North American Marketing for BMO Investorline and Harrisdirect.
The first review was held with my account team at Modem (all men), myself, Jackie P, Megan W, and Kari F. The first ad we saw was Joe from one of the commercials and what was interesting about Joe was that the ads were created in Flash (first time for this company and I had to fight to keep it by the way) and Joe's photo moved up and down to grab your attention. The second ad was for Robin and buxom beauty with the same movement.
Finally, they showed the Elsie Lee ad, which also moved. When compared with the print execution, Jamil was even more radiant and the ad definitely popped in more ways the one. Of course being the male, I noticed what was popping out to me, but given my politically correct training from AT&T, I waited for one of my female direct reports to say something...the review went like this:
Eric: <head spinning around> Umm, well, that is really, an eye opening creative. Megan?
Megan: <stone faced and serious> Yes it is. Kari what do you think....
Kari: <smiling and nodding her head up and down> Yep and....
Jackie: <interrupting Kari> Hey, she's got her headlights on!
Eric: <relieved and voice increasing> Thank god somebody said something. Come on guys. I can't show this. You are going to fix her. I can't do this.
Male Voice for Modem: We like her just the way she is.
Eric: <stunned, but not surprised given the male/female ratio on this call> Well. I'll tell you what. I have to show it to my boss, Brenda. She's from Canada and not uptight by these things, but in the outside chance she says keep it, you'll get your wish. Otherwise, you are going to have to airbrush them.
Of course when I showed Elsie to Brenda, she wasn't up tight, but did have me guarantee that we can air brush her, which I assured her we could. A week later, Modem sent Megan over 80 creative assets for trafficking which Megan put live within a few hours. See, at the time, the publishers that we were using (MarketWatch, Yahoo, NY Times and others) didn't require prior approval for our creatives. So, as soon as Megan loaded them into our ad server, BlueStreak, they were live in an hour; probably around 4PM on the Friday before Memorial Day....we didn't notice that three ads were not airbrushed...
PardonMyFrench,
Eric
---Again sorry about the posting problems
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