MZ Wallace Spring 2024 Ad Campaign

Review of MZ Wallace Spring 2024 Ad Campaign by Creative Director Dennis Freedman with Photographer Raymond Meier and Artist David Shrigley

MZ Wallace launches its first brand campaign, celebrating the accessories brand’s irreverent spirit through a unique and joyful partnership with artist David Shrigley. The campaign was also created in collaboration with creative director Dennis Freedman and photographer Raymond Meier.

“MZ Wallace has been an unconventional brand from the beginning,” reflected co-founders Monica Zwirner and Lucy Eustice Wallace. “To celebrate our upcoming 25^th anniversary, we wanted to launch a campaign that was irreverent and original, something that would challenge the viewer to take another look. We love David’s work for its wit, humor and sly commentary and pairing some of his drawings with Raymond Meier’s surreal twists on them perfectly express the ethos of our brand. Our customers are curious and intelligent. The campaign invites them into a story that they are free to interpret through their own engaged lens just as our bags empower them to express their individuality. We’re not defining the campaign through one sole message, just as our bags don’t define our customers.”

The campaign unfolds as a creative dialogue between Meier’s photographs and Shrigley’s paintings, each of which draw a sense of the unexpected, quirky, and uplifting out of familiar elements of everyday life. Meier’s compositions pair MZ Wallace’s signature bags with unexpected cargo, like a big bouquet of roses or a ceramic hamburger, or in random locations that create a strange sense of story, like locked in a dog kennel.

These still-lifes are paired with Shrigley’s bright and cartoonish paintings of flora, fauna, and fungi that are accompanied by tongue-in-cheek maxims: for example, “when life gives you a lemon, you must eat the lemon (all of it including the skin).”

Speaking to the process of bringing this creative combination together, creative director Dennis Freedman said,“ For their first campaign, MZ Wallace wanted to break the mold of traditional accessory advertising. The goal was for the ads to be challenging, witty and open to interpretation—qualities embodied by Monica and Lucy themselves. The artist David Shrigley and the photographer Raymond Meier each have a unique point of view. Although their work is inherently different, I saw that, together, they would create an unexpected synergy. Monica and Lucy were very excited about the possibilities of this pairing and were willing to take a risk.”

That risk seems to have paid off. Bravely and playfully making a distinct departure from your typical bag campaign, MZ Wallace exemplifies the power of bringing together unique creative voices.