By Jason Arnold | Tide Bandits

Boats have a special talent for getting filthy. You can leave the dock with everything looking respectable and return a few hours later with salt on the windshield, footprints across the deck, and something in the cockpit that requires a hose before it requires an explanation.

That’s boating. We spend plenty of time chasing the fun and a little less enthusiastically dealing with the evidence.

But there’s an entire group of people working on that second part. People whose job is to think about the mess long before we make it. I got to put some of them in front of my cameras while shooting video and photography for Star brite’s “Behind the Label” campaign.

And yes, a story about the people behind boat-cleaning products turned out to be a really cool project.

Stay with me. Nobody’s assigning you homework on soap.

Give the Bottle a Backstory

The idea behind “Behind the Label” was simple: introduce the people responsible for what boaters see on the shelf. Show the human side of a product, from the chemistry and marketing to upper management and the president’s office.

It’s easy to pick up a bottle and reduce the whole thing to one question: Will this help me deal with whatever happened to my boat?

Fair question. Especially when whatever happened has already dried.

But that bottle represents a bunch of people doing different jobs. Somebody has to work on what goes inside. Somebody has to figure out how to explain it. Somebody has to make decisions about where the company goes and how the pieces fit together.

This campaign gave those people a turn in the spotlight. As the guy handling video and photography, I got to help make those introductions.

A Pretty Unusual Guest List

One of the coolest parts of the project was getting to work with Star brite’s founder and every president the company has had throughout its history.

That’s a pretty unusual opportunity.

Usually, when you work on a campaign, you get a view of a brand as it exists right now. Here, I had the opportunity to photograph and film the people connected to its beginning and the people who have led it along the way.

There’s something especially interesting about putting a founder in front of a camera. You’re working with someone whose connection to the company starts before most customers ever knew its name.

Then you have the presidents, each connected to another part of that history. Bringing those people into the same campaign gives the brand a human timeline. The company becomes easier to picture as something built and carried forward by actual people.

For a photographer and filmmaker, that’s good material.

Chemistry Gets Its Close Up

The chemistry side deserves some attention, too.

Boaters tend to think about cleaning products when a problem is already staring back at them. The people working on the chemistry have to think about the product itself: what it’s intended to do and how to formulate it for that job.

My personal contribution to chemistry generally ends at reading the directions. Preferably before doing something dumb.

That’s why including this part of the business makes the campaign interesting. It gives viewers a connection to work they might never otherwise consider. There are people behind the formula, just as there are people behind the camera, the marketing, and the company’s leadership.

You don’t have to turn everyone watching into a chemist. You just have to give them a reason to recognize that expertise.

A boat owner standing over a dirty deck may be thinking about getting the job finished. Somewhere behind that product is a person whose work helped make that possible.

Marketing Has a Job Beyond Looking Pretty

Marketing also gets a seat at the table in “Behind the Label,” and that matters.

A product can have plenty going on inside the bottle, but somebody still has to explain what it is and why a boater would reach for it. People shopping for boat supplies are rarely hoping for a lengthy reading assignment.

They’ve got things to do. Their boat is probably one of them.

Good communication helps connect the product to its purpose. The marketing side is part of how that connection happens, and this campaign brings those people into the story alongside the people working on chemistry and leadership.

That broad view was a big part of the appeal for me. You can follow the idea across different roles instead of treating the finished product as something that appeared on a shelf by magic.

Although a self-cleaning boat would be a strong magic trick. I’d happily photograph that.

My Job Was to Bring the People Forward

For this project, I was involved in both video and photography. That gave me two ways to help tell the same story.

With video, a person gets to have a voice. With photography, you have to make a frame hold someone’s attention on its own. Both are useful when the whole point of the campaign is to introduce the humans behind the brand.

It was a fun shift in subject matter. In the fishing and boating world, the action usually gets first billing. A fish, a boat, a moment on the water: those are obvious things to point a camera at.

Here, the people working behind the products were the subject.

That’s an enjoyable challenge. You’re helping viewers connect a familiar name with a face. The person who might normally stay outside the finished marketing gets to become part of it.

And working across so many different roles gave the project more range than a straightforward product shoot.

Two Artists and a Boatload of Ideas

Another highlight has been working with Derek Redwine and the camaraderie we’ve developed over this year. Derek is a painter, and I’m a photographer and videographer, so we come at the creative process with different tools but plenty of common ground.

He has a brush. I have a camera and an unreasonable number of batteries.

We both care about what people see and how an image makes them feel. Composition, light, color, personality—those things matter whether you’re working on a canvas or looking through a lens. That shared interest gives us something to connect over beyond the work itself.

For me, that’s one of the best parts of collaborating with another artist. You get to appreciate how someone else sees things while bringing your own perspective to the project. Over this year, that creative connection with Derek has grown into a camaraderie I really value.

It also fits the spirit of “Behind the Label.” A campaign about the people behind a company becomes a little more personal when you’re building friendships while helping tell their story.

Why the Idea Stuck With Me

What I liked about “Behind the Label” was how approachable the idea was. You don’t need to know anything about the marine-products business to understand the invitation: come meet the people.

That’s a good starting point for a story.

It also makes sense in boating. We put a lot of ourselves into our boats, whether we’re fishing, cruising, or spending a Saturday working through the maintenance list we swore would take an hour.

The products involved in that routine have people behind them, too. This campaign lets those two sides get a little closer.

I was hired to shoot the campaign, so I had a direct role in helping tell it. What made the work enjoyable was the chance to show a broader picture of the company, especially with its founder and presidents involved.

There was plenty of room for personality in a subject people might otherwise overlook.

A Little More Than a Label

The next time you’re shopping for something to tackle your boat’s latest mess, you may still be focused on getting home and getting it handled.

Completely understandable. Nobody wants an emotional journey with a scrub brush.

But being part of “Behind the Label” gave me another way to look at that shelf. I got to work with the people connected to the products, the company’s origins, and its leadership across the years.

That made it a memorable project to photograph and film, and a fun story to bring back to Tide Bandits.

The boat will absolutely get dirty again.

At least now there are a few more faces to go with the cleanup.