The editor in chief of Winq magazine knew this about me. We go back quite a bit, and I emailed him to say that Jay had a new album out, and that they should definitely write about it. When Jay visited the Netherlands, and Winq had scheduled an interview with him, I managed to spin it in such a way that I could do the interview. I had talked my way in by saying that I'm the biggest expert on his music. My best question from that interview was "Are you ok if I switch my relationship with my imaginary friend for an imaginary relationship with you?". He was perfectly fine with that.

Some time after that first meeting with Jay, I emailed him asking whether he would like to take a portrait with me for a campaign. To sweeten the deal, we did some heavy promotion for him in our neck of the woods (Netherlands, Belgium and Germany). We had sample CD inlays in the biggest music magazine in the Netherlands, as well as in Rolling Stone and Musikexpress magazines in Germany, sponsored his tour, and of course took out a lot of ads that promoted his tour and album.

For the photoshoot, our regular photographer, crew and myself flew out to Jay's home town, New York. Somehow, the atmosphere there is slightly different from the one here in Moergestel. After a day of location scouting in Brooklyn, the Meatpacking District and Soho, the final campaign image was shot in lower Manhattan, on the junction right by the hotel we were staying in. Jay kept calling me 'Flawless' instead of 'Floris' and for lunch he had a key lime pie. I got very close to never returning home again.

A few weeks after the New York shoot we flew to Namibia to shoot our season campaign. As a soundtrack for the video we shot there, I was allowed to pick a song from Jay's catalogue. I picked 'My last day on earth' from the album 'Always, Then, & Now'. You can see the video by scrolling down this page a little bit.