Marie’s Salad Dressing Gets a TJ Blessing | 01 Sep
Here at Taylor James there was zero stressing over Marie’s salad dressing as our producers followed the project from pre-production right through to final delivery. Zsuzsanna, our lovely Hungarian Producer, reveals all about her time on our recent print and digital campaign for Marie’s Dressing…
“Ad agency, HW&H approached Taylor James to help with their product launch for Marie’s Dressing. A multi-platform campaign needed to launch their new products, which feature 6 different salad dressings. We had just one week to plan a two day shoot which would capture the material we would need to produce both still imagery and then motion aspects of the campaign. So we had to start sourcing the right props listed in their brief immediately – which is how a fellow producer and I ended up hiring a van and zipping down to Brighton to pick up some authentic old crates for the shoot!
Once we had all the props, we could start arranging them for the shoot and to best represent each product. As you can see in the Behind the Scenes video, this included matching which crate was to be our ‘Hero’ crate and which product (dressing) should go with what selection of vegetables. Luckily, the agency supplied us with a complete vegetable guide showing which had to go with each of the dressings. We shot 6 different Marie’s Dressings – Chunky Blue Cheese, Creamy Ranch, Coleslaw, Balsamic Vinaigrette, Basil pesto Vinaigrette and Raspberry Vinaigrette – each in various crate locations.
We captured the stills and the live action at Lock Studios, who were very accommodating and helpful. Our eagle eyed Cinematographer and Editor managed to capture the whole shoot and create two Behind the Scenes movies from the shadows which you can see on the project page.
On set, our food stylist, Emily, did an amazing job organising all the veggies in the crates. I never thought that organising leaves and carrots could be such an art, but watching her work you can see she definitely takes pride in what she does and it is a complicated job! She had a spray with her all times and sprayed oil on the vegetables frequently, so they didn’t evaporate under the hot studio light, keeping the vegetables looking fresh at all times.
The second shoot day was dedicated to the motion part of the campaign, which you can now see online. We glued tracking markers to all the crates, so we can remove the front and replace it with the illustrations that HW&H provided. We had a very strict timeframe in terms of how quickly we had to stack the crates in frame. It definitely took some organising and a few takes to get precisely what we envisaged. Stacking crates and placing bottles is not as easy as it looks when you want it to look natural and effortless – the bottle and the vegetables kept wobbling where we placed them!
HW&H is a nice little family-oriented business in Santa Monica, USA and we couldn’t have asked for a better client. They were open to our suggestions and we always got prompt clear feedback. They were unable to fly over and attend the shoot in London, so we allocated ‘Skype time’ (waiting until dawn on West Coast USA, 8 hours behind London time) on the shoot when we could share progress and explain how we envisioned moving forward. With our Retoucher on set, all the selects and rough compositions were sent over so that we could easily review work with the client and had the opportunity to adapt the art direction during the shoot.
We had a fun and very successful shoot, and we were able to have a great (healthy) feast of leftover fresh veggies at wrap! Back at the studio and on track to deliver the work on schedule, we moved onto the next task of comping together the branding artwork with the footage, bedding in the text with the crates to give a look that you wouldn’t question.
When I look back at this project, I feel like everything was at the right place: Amazing crew and team with a great client on board, there was no question that this project would be a great success. We have created 3 Hero prints and 3 different format banner ads each with text adaptations, and while we’re crunching on our carrots, we have a very happy client and agency indeed. What’s not to like about being a producer? Every day is different and that’s why I love it! Zs x
