Delivering Photographic Solutions for Pepsi and FARFETCH: The Starry Campaign
Recently, they had witnessed an advance preview of the Super Bowl commercial spot for Pepsi and their “It’s Time to See Other Sodas” campaign, in which Grammy-nominated rapper Ice Spice runs into her ex, “Lemon Lime Soda” and has to break the news that she’s with Starry now, a new soda that’s simply more refreshing and crisp.
You probably remember it:
In the ad, the ex is wearing a distinctive green pullover sweatshirt with an unknown design pixelated out (our guess it had to be either a Sprite or 7-Up logo) and the agency had a lightning bolt of a last minute brilliant idea: wouldn’t it be cool if someone could watch the commercial, dig the sweater, and be able to go right online to buy it?
With a mere idea and the Super Bowl quickly approaching, they quickly got to work making it happen. And the final product they manifested exceeded expectations: a super fresh, limited edition release brought to you by a collaboration between Pepsi, Chicago streetwear designer Don C, and FARFETCH (probably the hippest global platform for luxury fashion in existence).
Now with the actual Just Don STARRY® Break Up sweatshirt successfully brought to life, the next step for them was to have it photographed for ecommerce and marketing, and that’s when they fired off that email that reached us on that particular Tuesday, only mere days before the commercial would debut.
They would need a combined custom apparel and product photography solution… and they needed it produced fast.
No problem!
The Just Don STARRY® Break Up sweatshirt is a limited edition piece accompanied by a matching gift box. It was made exclusively for FARFETCH, so the photography had to be impeccable. A premier ecommerce platform like FARFETCH demands the highest quality images, understanding that they provide clear expectations that are the secret that leads to customer satisfaction and increased conversions. This is achieved by optimizing the product detail page to thoroughly depict the item being sold through multiple styles of apparel photography.
The photography plan was elaborate, but elegant, and designed to be carried out quickly. First, the centerpiece images for the product detail page would be shot on-model to give the best picture of how cool the Break Up sweatshirt looks being worn, and at different angles. We spent Wednesday scouting the perfect model for the client. The following day, we received the apparel sample as well as the custom gift box and then we were ready to shoot on Stage 2 (Stage 1 was already booked to shoot millions of dollars of jewelry on-model for Shay that day).
This would be supported by shooting the sweatshirt with flat lay techniques to feature the item by itself, as well as product shots of the sweatshirt in the gift box, just as if you were unboxing it after it arrived fresh into your hands. Thankfully we had two stages open to accommodate this project in its entirety. Having a 6000 square foot studio with multiple separate stages has its advantages. In this case, allowing us to shoot in several different ways; using techniques that each has their own particular set up and lighting methods, all happening simultaneously for a maximum efficiency; producing product and apparel images quickly, all without sacrificing quality. And we were able to follow and match the guidelines that FARFETCH enforces on their vendors.
With a crucial deadline quickly approaching for the agency, the key to pulling off this single day series of different shoots speaks to Space & Light Digital’s strengths and flexibility as your trusted content partner. Usually after a shoot, a client would order images, choosing the ones that they like best. We would then retouch them and send back to the client no more than 24 hours later. As this was extremely time sensitive, and even a mere additional 24 hours was prohibitory, we would make the unretouched image files available at no additional cost so that the client could take possession of them as soon as we were done shooting.
Offering these images in their unretouched form demonstrates the confidence and skill of our photographers in producing high-quality images from the outset, but to truly make this a viable time-saving solution we offered something for free that is usually only available for premium shoots on Stage 1— a virtual live session for remote viewing. The virtual live session allows for anyone in the world to virtually attend the shoot and interact with the process. In this case, it was the FARFETCH brand managers attending the virtual session live in London. They were then able to provide clear brand guidelines and approve images in real-time despite being across the pond.
When presented with a client’s critical deadline we eagerly bent over backwards and used our wealth of studio experience to a deliver a distinctly bespoke and highly effective photographic solution. In the end, the client was extremely satisfied with our service, and the results speak for themselves.
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