Role: Creative director, photographer, filmmaker & designer
Deliverables: Ad campaign, photography & film

Finnoff + MT Propeller – removing the aircraft from the propeller

Finnoff Aviation Products had a problem. The company had a lot of beautiful images of airplanes, but it was hard to get customers to notice the propellers they were selling on them. A propeller is usually not the first thing that catches your eye when looking at a beautiful Pilatus PC-12. But the MT five- and seven-blade propellers are not just ordinary props. They are handcrafted and precision-engineered in Germany: components that can drastically change the performance and comfort of a Pilatus PC-12. For this project, I wanted to try something radically different, something neither Finnoff nor MT Propeller had done. I wanted to take the aircraft away from the propeller and give it a value of its own, to show a side that people have never seen before.

This concept took me to Straubing, Germany, where I spent two days in a hangar filming and photographing only propellers: every angle, every detail, every refinement that goes into building one of these products. With the images, I built a totally new ad campaign and design language for Finnoff with the product front and center on the wireframe PC-12, and gave the propeller its own space as a video on the company's homepage.

In depth

Only the prop

With the aircraft as a canvas, the propeller becomes the subject, forcing the viewer to see its large, aggressive presence. When mounted on the aircraft, it's nicknamed the Silent Seven, but away from the aircraft, on its own, the propeller screams performance.

An MT seven-blade propeller on a pale wireframe Pilatus PC-12, seen head-on

Black blades and spinner of an MT seven-blade propeller against white

One black blade of an MT seven-blade propeller rising from the spinner, against white

Seeing differently

Most pilots only see the propeller mounted. Those who see it off the aircraft are usually the engineers who build it and the mechanics who install it. With the propeller on a stand, I was able to capture every angle and every curve, not possible when mounted on an aircraft.

MT seven-blade and five-blade propellers on stands against a ribbed hangar wall

The final touch

On the factory floor, the blades are shaped and finished by hand, carefully measured and adjusted for precision and reliability. The last step before the propeller goes on an aircraft.

The MT Propeller factory floor in Straubing seen from above, blades racked on the left and propellers on stands

A worker in blue marks a propeller blade with a pen and a blue template at the MT Propeller factory in Straubing

Performance refined

I built the campaign around a single product. It ran in POPA and FLYING magazines and became the new blueprint for all future marketing. Finnoff's strategy transformed from selling products on airplanes to focusing on the products that enhance them.

A MacBook on a dark table showing the finnoff.com home page: Performance Refined over the MT-Propeller film

A MacBook on a lap showing the Finnoff products page: the PC-12 7-blade MT-Propeller section

A magazine open to the Faster Quieter Stronger ad for MT five- and seven-blade propellers on the Pilatus PC-12

A billboard on a concrete wall showing the MT seven-blade propeller, the PT6A-67P engine and the MT five-blade propeller on a gray gradient

“Wow! Yours are so much better! … Beautiful!”

Pat Finnoff, Finnoff Aviation Products