For a humourous twist on its competitors' promptness of delivery, Coilcraft's John Stellberg designed a simple ad with an unmistakable message. A lowly snail with an inductor (one of Coilcraft's product categories) tied to its back, creeping along to the customer, would sum up the ad's headline of "How most inductor companies get samples to you".
Acquiring the star proved to be one of the trickiest parts of the shoot. January in Chicago is not prime season for snails, and agricultural laws prohibit shipping live specimens (from purveyors of escargot for restaurants). John hit upon the idea of trying biological supply houses, which were exempt from the ban. Two companies agreed to ship live helix aspera, a common garden snail, via rush service (!) to Chicago.
The young snails were coaxed into crawling across a white shiny surface, lured by lettuce, and photographed on 35mm color transparencies. These images were then combined with stills shot digitally of the inductor itself and the resulting image posted to a web page for approval from the client, who was out of town at the time.
Once the shot was approved, the fine detail work of creating the string and knot array was done in studio using heavy drapery cord and a setup which duplicated the curves and planes of the snail and its burden. All elements, shot and lit to match look of original snail photo, were carefully assembled with appropriate shadows and reflections, and delivered on-disk to Coilcraft for their ad.
As for the snails themselves, they now spend their days happily munching Romaine lettuce as studio pets.