The Truck We Had to Chase

The idea was to make the people appear to be sitting inside the truck. Later, the photograph would be printed on the side of the delivery vehicles, so that when the trucks were moving through the city, it would look as though a small restaurant was travelling inside them. The restaurant’s slogan was “An offer you won’t be able to refuse,” and from there the story almost wrote itself: a man, a woman, a dinner, and a ring hidden beneath the table.

There was only one problem. To photograph the scene properly, we needed a truck with a side opening. Almost every truck we found opened at the back, which was useless for the picture we had in mind. We looked around, asked people, searched everywhere, and got nowhere. Then, one day, while driving through Phuket, we noticed exactly the kind of truck we needed.

We followed it. It turned into a laundry, and there it was, loading bags of linen. It was, of all things, a laundry truck. We found the owner, explained what we wanted to do, and, to our relief, he agreed. So the truck that had been carrying laundry became our little restaurant for the day.

We put the table inside, seated our couple, and waited for the moment when the man would finally produce the ring. The photograph was made, and later the image was placed on the sides of the Spice House trucks. A picture that began as a problem — where on earth are we going to find the right truck? — ended up becoming exactly what the campaign needed: something unusual enough to be remembered.