LINCOLN / GENERATIONS
Celebrating 75 years of the Lincoln Continental through the eyes of the artists who invented the cinemagraph.
Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg of Ann Street Studio shot each era of Continental with a camera and film from that same era.
The Lincoln Continental turned 75, and Lincoln wanted to mark the moment with something visual that felt authentic and unexpected. A standard anniversary retrospective would have looked back at the cars. The goal was to make people feel why the Continental mattered, then and now.
As creative lead for Ford and Lincoln social media at Team Ford at WPP/Ogilvy, I brought in Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg, the New York artists who created the cinemagraph and built their following online. The project carried forward Lincoln's co-creation approach with emerging artists: give them the brand's story and the resources to tell it their own way.
Together we staged a glamorized version of the past, built on the tailored details that define each generation of Continental. Every image matched three things from the same era: a period Continental, a period camera and period film. That connected the craft behind the car to the craft behind the photograph. Early Vogue covers showed how closely the Continental was tied to fashion, so each shoot added boldly styled wardrobe from its decade, placing the Continentals of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s in context for a contemporary audience.
The series ran across Lincoln's channels and showed the timeless elegance behind the Continental name, in a way that made a 75-year-old car feel current.
Client: The Lincoln Motor Company
Employer: Team Ford at WPP/Ogilvy
Position: Creative Lead, Ford and Lincoln Social Media
Project role: Concept, artist co-creation, creative direction
Collaborators: Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg, Ann Street Studio
Occasion: Lincoln Continental 75th anniversary
Method: Each era shot with a period Continental, period camera and period film
Disciplines: Artist collaboration, photography, fashion, social media, creative direction
