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It's neat to look at the two pictures:

Rob is holding up a bag of Soylent, presenting it to the reader, bag in focus Rob considerably out of focus. Background is hard to make out, maybe a lag, kitchen, or kitchen-lab?

Bryan is sitting at a table, clearly in a situation where he's "on display" (jacket, microphone, earpiece), face well-lit. The product is in front of him, almost as out of focus as Rob is in the first photo. In fact, although the bottles are branded, you can more easily make out the Soylent logo on Bryan's shirt even though it's folded than you can on the bottles.

I'm just saying, if this were a movie I know what the message the director/DP would be trying to convey is: Rob was all about being the CEO who invented Soylent and brought it to the world. He makes a bag of powder the star of the photo of himself. Now it's Bryan's time, where the focus of the CEO's office is the CEO: Bryan.

Of course, this is not a movie. They're probably saying a lot less than that with their photo choices in real life.




As a video editor, I'd say you are close. imho, to me it doesn't say that Rob was making his leadership of the company all about the product (you'd really have to go back and look at past photos to see if this is true) but more that he is now fading into the background of the company, while Bryan is "focused" on future of the company (looking towards the viewers right which is typically the future). Although many decisions like that in films often tend to be happy accidents (or subconscious choices), it is pretty clear that they are deemphasizing Rob.


these are self-selected pics to show off the new CEO and de-highlighting the founder. There's nothing subtle about it.


I don't know why, and I am sure I am wrong and he is a wonderful human being, but I had a visceral dislike to the picture of the new CEO.


This add-copy would be a great example piece in a business-psych class. The poor photoshopping aside, the messages that the pictures convey are clear once pointed out.

Honestly, good work on the designer of the blog-posting, they should be looking for a better job with this level of expertise.




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