The Choice of Champions: Give Everyday Skill the Portrait It Deserves

Read the campaign story

The customer takes the position usually occupied by the product. Screwfix’s March 2022 The Choice of Champions campaign uses portraits of working tradespeople to foreground their skill and dedication. Chime 360 created the work, with 32 directing through Pulse Films; Cinelab records film-processing and scanning services. The brand’s announcement describes the campaign as a celebration of people who build, maintain and repair.

Editorial interpretation: a portrait changes the hierarchy of an advertisement. Instead of presenting a tool and then adding someone to use it, the work asks the audience to notice the person whose judgment gives the tool a purpose. That can be a meaningful expression of respect, but it can also become an empty heroic style. Lighting, posture and a grand label do not explain skill. The more useful question is what detail allows the viewer to recognize practiced attention. A campaign can honor an occupation without implying that endurance, risk or overwork are the price of belonging to it.

The primary brand announcement and production-service record establish the campaign and scoped credits. They do not verify individual competence, customer outcomes or the effect of the advertising. Promotional language is not a professional qualification. No real worker’s private history is reproduced, and no electrical, building, repair or equipment procedure is taught. The fictional exercise below concerns an adult exhibition-label team and uses invented characters, with no recruitment, evaluation or actual workplace photography.

Find the decision behind the visible activity

For an invented exhibition-label editor, the useful moment might be checking whether a visitor can distinguish a date from an accession number. A photograph-like drawing of someone concentrating is less specific than a scene showing that comparison. Begin with the judgment, then decide how to represent it. This keeps the portrait from becoming interchangeable with any other profession. The audience should be able to explain something the person notices, not merely conclude that they look serious, busy or unusually determined.

Leave ownership of the achievement with the person

An original supplier campaign can show how a service supports the fictional editor without claiming to have created their skill. Separate the person’s decisions from the material or information the organization provides. That makes the relationship more credible and gives the brand a bounded role. If the story suggests that using one supplier turns anyone into an expert, it has crossed from recognition into an unsupported performance claim. Respect is stronger when the organization does not absorb every achievement into its own identity.

Avoid making sacrifice the qualification for respect

A fictional portrait need not show exhaustion or personal hardship to make ordinary work matter. Include preparation, collaboration or a careful decision made within reasonable limits. This leaves room for people whose working styles do not fit the heroic stereotype. The creative team can still make the image compelling through composition and a specific action. The point is to celebrate the contribution without teaching the audience that only exceptional endurance, constant availability or taking risks makes someone worthy of recognition.

A small test for another brief

Proposed adaptation: draw two original portrait cards for an invented exhibition-label editor. One uses a grand pose and broad praise; the other shows a precise distinction the editor checks before a label is approved. Give both the same short description of a fictional supplier’s limited contribution. Ask consenting adult reviewers what skill they recognize, who deserves credit and what the image does not prove. Use no real employee, performance record, workplace image or hiring decision. Provide a complete text description alongside each drawing.

Compare specific descriptions of the skill with general impressions of heroism. A respectful reaction is not proof that the viewer understands the work. Record whether reviewers attribute the person’s ability to the fictional supplier without evidence. The exercise can improve the portrait’s meaning, but cannot assess occupational competence or establish the historical campaign’s commercial effect.

Revise if the person is reduced to a prop, the brand takes credit for their expertise or the image glorifies overwork and risk. Keep the recognition tied to a concrete contribution that can be described without a slogan.

• Identify one judgment rather than a generic activity.
• Separate the person’s contribution from the supplier’s.
• Remove any implication that respect requires unsafe sacrifice.