The
Brief
For Kao Corporation’s Wonder of Winter 2023 campaign, we were approached with the brief to produce a suite of campaign photography and video content for the Goldwell, KMS, and Kerasilk brands to be predominantly used across social media outreach, to support the wider campaign content.
The content was to be inspired by the supplied imagery and the key words Luxury, Clean, Frozen, and Premium. As each brand had taken a distinctive and unique approach to their interpretation of the Wonder of Winter, it was important to take elements of the packaging and existing branded assets and create a through-theme to ensure that all assets were thematically aligned but distinct and unique.
Client
Production Time
Team
Our
Solution
What we produced were three distinct sets of photography and video content over two days of production, one setup for each of the brands Goldwell, KMS, and Kerasilk. We shot across two days and in two separate studios in tandem, which allowed us to use the same setups for photography and video but to shoot in tandem to avoid disrupting the other team. The only setup shot in tandem was for Kerasilk, as it relied on using real ice and was too time-sensitive to risk doing twice.
KMS
For KMS, we took an entirely different approach and used layered laser-cut paper cut-outs to represent the ice scenes. We took inspiration from the shapes and design elements present within the beautiful illustrations by Alana McDowell on the KMS packaging and laser-cut sheets of large card, layering them intricately and creating playful scenes that conveyed a sense of depth and winter magic. This process allowed us to craft feather-like structures, stars, and emblems. The color palette for this concept focused on the blues found at the base of KMS packaging. By carefully casting light across the paper structures, we created a visual experience that exuded drama, depth, and shadow, ensuring a festive feel without relying on any Christmas clichés. Taking inspiration from contemporary and out-of-the-box artistic styles, we drew parallels to the work of visionary illustrators such as those associated with Vans. This concept brought a youthful and vibrant energy to KMS, highlighting its uniqueness and individuality. This also lent itself well to moving video content, whereby the parallax effect of moving the paper cut-outs independently provided a huge amount of opportunity to produce beautiful and engaging video content that tied in with the campaign and brand.
Goldwell
Our concept for Goldwell was to use the core concept of shooting through frozen glass, with the surface ice scraped away to reveal the products submerged in a deep freeze. This represented the ‘color movement’ inspired by Goldwell’s gift boxes by way of the shape of the ice that was scraped away. We incorporated a splash of the red from the packaging in the scene by use of red berries frozen under the surface, maintaining and elevating the monochromatic visual style already represented in the packaging. By showcasing the color movement through the ice and the delicate interplay of light and texture, we created timeless high-end campaign imagery that truly represented the brand and the campaign as a whole, all the while elevating the quality of the brand’s imagery and video content. In regards to video, we took this same concept and played with the dynamics of the scraping away of surface ice to reveal the products. The environment came alive by use of dynamic lighting shining through the ice to create a visceral and beautiful result that worked great as standalone video content and as part of the wider sell-in video.
Kerasilk
& Final Thoughts
Our concept for Kerasilk’s photography project aimed to showcase the essence of winter through the use of large blocks of solid ice. Inspired by the White Company Christmas aesthetic, we created a landscape using jagged ice blocks of different dimensions and scales, serving as a canvas to showcase Kerasilk’s products. To add a touch of luxury and elegance, we froze the products in ice alongside out-of-season ingredients like jasmine, bergamot, and amber. This reinforced the pureness of Kerasilk’s offerings. We also created a captivating video of the melting process, capturing the transformation from solid to liquid.
By reversing the video, we showcased ‘the first frost of winter’ conceptually and created a visceral experience that tied the campaign together. Throughout the shoot, we played with light, shadow, and the glistening effect of melting ice to evoke a sense of wonder and enchantment against a printed blue sky background to ensure that all refracted light accurately distorted the background to produce a more realistic final result and to avoid relying on post-production to create such an effect. This concept encapsulated the timeless beauty of Kerasilk’s products, emphasising the purity and elegance they bring and leaving a lasting impression on viewers, highlighting the uniqueness and importance of Kerasilk in the hair care industry.
If we were to do the project again, we would have avoided shooting on the two hottest days of the year. Not an easy job to keep ice from freezing when it’s 39 degrees celsius outside, good thing we had air conditioning! We also would have mounted the Goldwell setup on a stronger surface to avoid movement. We worked around this by stabilising in post-production, however this wouldn’t always be possible and would have sped up production considerably if this wasn’t one of the challenges faced with nailing each take.
Overall, the client was very happy with the final content and went on to sell a huge number of Winter 2023 gift sets, which is in-part due to the content we produced to support the campaign and push social media users to convert.
