Client: Nair
Concept, Development & Art Direction: DMH and Simon Maye
Photography: Ben Ottewell
Directing and Editing: DMH & Dan Berstein
Production: Dan Berstein
Social strategy: Alice Thompson & Stacey Barraclough
We were tasked with coming up for a campaign for Nair's Instagram and other social outlets across the holiday season. We know great skin starts with Nair, so had to think up an engaging way of showing off amazing skin on the small screen. We shot a series of Stereoscopes to give the viewer a 3D look at how well Nair works, and to really stand out amongst a crowded feed. We wanted to hit home that it all starts with great skin so we shot accompanying product and makeup how to videos, to show the viewers how to really get the look. We partnered with the amazing Olivia Buckland and all worked towards smooth styling by Nair.
With creative partner Max Wilson
Art Direction & Copywriting - Concept and development: Danny & Max
Creative Direction: Howard Fretton
Photography: Rory Van Millingen
Video direction: Ben Ottewell, Danny & Max
Production: Dan Bernstein
Nair make waxes and cream for hair removal; not just for legs but for bikini lines, as well as face and eyebrows too. Their latest NPD came with the addition of argan oil; known as ‘liquid gold’ and for its soothing, nourishing qualities – consumers are familiar with it as a natural moisturiser for skin and hair.
Across print, digital and social media an idea was needed that could communicate several benefits; effective waxing, a new ‘less pain’ formula; several product types, for legs, body and face – and don’t forget the soothing, nourishing qualities of that liquid gold. Our simple solution to a fairly complicated task was ‘More than Waxing’ – it’s a wax, with a little added pampering.
When it came to art directing this, the brand wanted us to evolve the previous year’s creative work with regard look and feel. This meant a colour palette of brown and gold had to stay – very 1960s, in a good way – as did the naked woman. A tough life. Obviously, our minds were only ever going to go to one place. No, not there.
Bond, James Bond. Specifically – Robert Brownjohn’s title sequences for both From Russia With Love and Goldfinger. Seriously – it makes sense too, it’s not shoehorning a Bond reference for the sake of it. See, because we’re talking smooth, soothed, nourished skin, we need to see smooth, soothed, nourished skin. We can’t have a whacking great headline screaming across this one, sorry typographers; we’re going to have the whacking great headline projected on to this one, like a Brownjohn Bond title – and we’re going to do it in camera, like it’s the 1960s.
This campaign contributed to a positive year for Nair, helping to launch the 'Bye Bye Pain' product – during May 2015, when the majority of the activity for this campaign took place, net sales were up 17.7% year-on-year.
With creative partner Max Wilson
Art Direction & Copywriting - Concept & Development: Danny & Max
Creative Direction: Howard Fretton
Photography: Danny
Retouching: Ben Ottewell
Production: Moonlighting S.A.
For 2016 Stérimar wanted work that would lead-on from our ‘Nature’s Apology’ work whilst focusing on a new strategy to further highlight the fact that Stérimar is a solution to allergies that comes without the side effects common to medicated allergy remedies.
Stérimar, being a lot less medicated than its competitors, doesn’t have any side effects. We thought, wouldn’t it be fun to think of some positive side effects, some of the things you can do now you haven’t got your allergies to worry about – walks in the park, picnics, summer parties, barbecues.
In terms of art direction, Stérimar wanted to keep things much as they were in 2015, but with a few changes to go along with the new idea – most important to us was to use a design that plays on the pharmacy-style "side effects include" label.
In total we shot five executions for this idea to run across various products in the Stérimar range including baby, kids and allergy response – we were also asked to adapt the idea for direct marketing to GPs and other medical professionals.
Activity for this campaign well run through 2016, we'll add more work to the page as and when it goes live.
With creative partner Max Wilson
Concept & Development - Art Direction & Copywriting: Danny & Max
Creative Direction: Howard Fretton
Director: Dahlan Lassale
Producer: Rosie Wells
Edit and graphics: Platform
2015: Our 30 sec pre-roll written for Kaspersky's Total Security product. We wrote and developed a treatment that could be easily translated into other languages for the client's various global markets. Through a series of vignettes showing use in everyday life, our idea Total protection for your digital life, tied together the areas of protection the product offered with examples of devices the software can protect.
With creative partner Max Wilson
Concept and Development - Art Direction & Copywriting - Illustration - Animation - Danny & Max
Additional animation and Illustration - Giphy artists
Web Build - Media Therapy
This is an overview of the social media campaign that ran alongside the TVC – we built a Tumblr that was used a hub for gifs and images. Building the micro-site on Tumblr meant the content could exist in a community outside of the site, but also that Arm & Hammer fans could share with us their own 'exceptional experience' images and videos.
As part of a strategy to promote the Tumblr, and to get the ball rolling in terms of content to fill the site, we partnered with GIPHY to commission gifs from key influencer-artists on Tumblr.
Photography: Danny & Max
Video - Editing: Danny
Nair had an on-going sponsorship agreement with British fashion designer Jean-Pierre Braganza. The social media team came to us looking for ideas that could use the sponsorship agreement to help launch Nair on Instagram – and Danny had just bought a fancy new wifi-enabled digital camera.
Rather than just 'live blog' the show itself, we suggested using the relationship Nair had with Jean-Pierre Braganza to give its followers behind the scenes access to as much of London Fashion Week as possible – the only problem being, Nair didn't have many followers at all.
One of the tactic we suggested was to set up the Nair Instagram account as a street-style 'blogger' on the day of the show – going out to snap the "beautiful #legs on show" around fashion week events. Having specific aims, such as targeting fashion bloggers, people with lots of followers of their own, helped Nair gain a foothold with a fashion conscious audience.
Photography - Retouching: Danny
Production: Moonlighting SA
As part of the Stérimar 'Positive Side Effects' campaign I was asked to shoot some imagery for use across their new website and their social media outlets. I spent the day in Kirstenbosch gardens with a mum and her three kids trying to catch the moments in-between them playing football with the producer and throwing strawberries at each other. I even managed to sneak in a few cheeky product shots.
With creative partner Max Wilson
Art Direction & Copywriting - Concept & Development: Danny & Max
Creative Direction: Howard Fretton
Director - Animation - Illustration: Kate Moros
Production: My Accomplice
The brief for Arm & Hammer was a bit of dream – cut through the boring tropes of toothpaste advertising and wake up customers, who were otherwise sleepwalking toward their usual purchase. A dream brief, because the opposite of “boring” is ‘fun’ and fun means go nuts, right?
Right, but what’s fun about toothpaste? Arm & Hammer is a little different – it tastes funny, because it’s full of baking soda; and that feels odd in your mouth. Celebrating what makes the brand’s numerous products different is a platform which Media Therapy have developed over the years, one which we jumped right off for 2015, launching ‘Experience the Exceptional’ as a brand proposition whilst developing a series of three television commercials as well as in-store promotional amplification and a supporting social media campaign
The idea that ‘your toothpaste is boring’ was expressed either directly, literally as a statement, particularly in-store, where we knew those somnambulist consumers would be headed toward another Colgate purchase – or, as we did with the TV spots, through showing that it could be possible that a toothpaste might offer something different; “does your toothpaste make you feel like this?”.
We were confident that our choice of director, Kate Moross, could deliver ‘something different’ – as well as a breadth of experience working with major brands in her unique style as designer, illustrator and director. First in the category to draw influence from both Anchorman and Hayao Miyazaki; just imagine the pre-production meeting.
With creative partner Max Wilson
Art Direction & Copywriting - Concept & Development: Danny & Max
Creative Direction: Howard Fretton
Photography: Danny
Retouching: Pics
Nature came up with all this crap, allergens that ruin summer, viruses that ruin winter – we thought, well, nature’s not that bad – nature doesn’t want you to run around with a bunged-up nose. Stérimar – a nasal-cleansing spray, made of 100% natural sea water – is the apology nature gave for leaving noses running year-round.
An idea simple enough to work across print, digital, as well as in-store and in pharmacies too – the final important consideration was that the creative looked distinct within a category that, for consumers considering something different, would include medicated allergy relief solutions as well as anything you might sip for a cold.
Given Stérimar is a solution found in nature – we photographed the product as if it were ‘found’ in nature. A bit of a visual pun – if puns are your thing. It was another simple way of extolling the product’s natural qualities whilst playing with the visual themes of the category – shot, of course, using only natural sunlight and reflectors.
This project was interesting to us as a team, particularly, because as well as devising the campaign creative we were able to shoot the campaign too – using our prior experience working as [or with] photographers – we packed up the kit and headed, naturally, as you’d expect, to Cape Town for a summer’s week of perfect natural light. A tough job, but somebody had to do it.
Creative Direction - Concept & Development - Copywriting: Howard Fretton
Art Direction - Illustration - Photography: Danny
Photography - Art Direction: DMH
For this shoot we went all over the country to every Sweaty Betty store to take photos of their store ambassadors. The images were used in store and across social media to get people in and doing some of the great activites each store has to offer.
