We wish we can announce our winners with the usual fanfare that accompanies these kind of announcements: drum roll, the envelope ritual, and the confetti drop. But print does have its limits and the absence of the hoopla doesn’t necessarily signify a less deserving win, or a less valuable prize.
A couple of months ago, Motorola and Globe, in cooperation with YStyle, launched a promo where those who purchased a Globe post-paid plan with the MotoRazr2 will be eligible for a chance to fly to London with a companion and visit and train for a few days at the David Beckham Academy with the soccer god himself. The four lucky winners who took advantage of this exclusive Globe perk and their companions are Mary Ann Hung and Marvin Hung, Michelle Hung and Raymond Allan Sy, Marilette Villenas and Jemelle Nicolas, and Maria Richella Damo and Richie Montalbo. They’ll be flying to the UK in January, accommodations, airfare, and tour all courtesy of Globe.
In line with this Globe-Moto promo, YStyle came up with a gimmick of its own. We asked four teams composed of the country’s young and creative talent to come up with an image that best exemplifies the edginess of Motorola’s new Razr2 phone. Since David Beckham is the global ambassador for this new Moto flip-up, we paired up each team — photographer, makeup artist, fashion stylist — with an athlete from different sports. Then we asked our readers to vote on the image they deem the edgiest.
All teams came up with striking images but it was the image “Leap into the Future” created by photographer Kai Huang, stylist Anne Bella and makeup artist Omar Ermita, featuring basketball young gun Cholo Villanueva, which caught our readers’ attention.
“A Leap into the Future” showed former De La Salle Archer Cholo Villanueva dressed as a futuristic cyborg in mid-air, holding a silver basketball. Beneath him is the Moto Razr 2, its sleek keypad depicted as the hardcourt. Behind him, the Razr2’s high-resolution screen depicts a crowd of fans in the stands and a basketball court.
What made this image stand out, apart from the dynamism it captures, is really the obsession with detail, and the resourcefulness employed into effecting these tiny tidbits. If you look close enough, you’ll see that the futuristic eye patch Cholo is wearing is actually a bunch of everyday gadgets that photographer Kai cleverly put together: a pasta ladle, a garden hose screw, and some copper wires. The knee pads employed the same ingenuity, this time with hollow spring pipes and phone wire casings, which stylist Anne Bella spray-painted silver along with a basketball. To complete the athlete-machine depiction, makeup artist Omar Ermita painted Cholo’s face with streaks in the Moto Razr2 Ferrari edition (you can see it hanging from the baller’s neck) colors. Wiry streaks also run down Cholo’s arms and legs. “We wanted to show Motorola as an inherent part of the future,” says Kai Huang.
Each member of the winning team gets their own Moto Razr2. But that’s not the end of it. We also promised four of our reader-voters a chance to see for themselves what exactly this slim new sensation is all about. So, for telling us which image they liked best and why, Verna Lee, Lovely Gamas, Mark Arreza, and Roman Almabis each get a Moto Razr2.
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Reader-voters can claim their Moto Razr2 with the lobby guard of the Philippine Star office at R. Oca St corner Rail Road St., Port Area, Manila on Dec 26.
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