Client:
Christian Louboutin
Title:
'The Gift'
Beauty Christmas Campaign 2020
Agency:
Puig
Full Credits:
Client: Christian Louboutin
Agency: Puig
Studio: Velvet Badger
Creative Director: Chris Joyce
Illustrator: Hélène Tran
3D: Lukas Kuhn, Enric Rodriguez, Nemanja Ivanovic, Tabriaz Waheed, Lisander Qorri
Audio: Box of Toys
When Barcelona based agency Puig, the luxury fragrance and beauty partner to Christian Louboutin, approached Velvet Badger in January 2020 with an enticing Christmas brief, the Clan swiftly recovered from a season of indulgence and festivities and prepared for the challenge. The brief was to deliver the first ever Christmas campaign for CL beauty and fragrance and premier the latest products and christmas packaging for social, digital and retail use.
It was essential to build upon the brand as not only an iconic fashion house but a beauty destination. Housing the cosmetic products alongside the fashion items in unique and surreal worlds allowed the team to unleash their creativity and delve into the playful and seductive world of Christian Louboutin. The concept titled ‘The Gift’ used the 2020 retail Christmas snowglobe as the gateway into the fantastical world, where we take the viewer on a journey into the brilliant mind of the creator. The products are depicted as narrative disruptors and devices to guide the viewer through to the stunning end of the animation. A nuanced and minimalist “Christmas” aesthetic is used throughout the journey until the viewer is greeted by a vast and stunning Louboutin themed product tree to close the animation and leave you questioning the realm of reality and fantasy.
Over the course of 6 months, the Clan worked tirelessly to design and deliver a stunning Christmas Campaign with over 150 individual deliverables. While the rest of the world appeared to grind to a halt in 2020, our Badgers were busy crafting a fantastical and indulgent animation full of rich aesthetics and escapism. Velvet Badger designed and produced a one minute film along with a plethora of campaign assets including Capsule videos, cut-downs, gifs and stills to be used for social, digital and retail.
Like many, this year has been full of unexpected challenges however, this project certainly kept us going and provided our dedicated team focus throughout the multiple lockdowns. We adapted and changed over the course of the project to ensure we could continue to work to our highest level; from working remotely from multiple countries, relocating multiple render machines into our cosy homes and daily Zoom calls with pets and kids. The final campaign captures our core values of beautiful moving images through fastidious direction and delivery.
Social Campaign
The Christmas campaign needed to transcend all platforms and modes of publication which required an army of assets in multiple formats to ensure they could be used across retail and social media. We combed through the film to identify the perfect packshots and compositions for gifs, stills and cutdown videos to be edited and rendered in multiple formats. In addition, we created individual capsule videos to tease more of the products for a range global markets. With over 250 individual deliverables, we had to create a production asset handbook to aid the client in asset management to support the campaign roll out.
Behind the Scenes
We are pleased to share with you our behind the scenes video for our 2020 Christian Louboutin Christmas Campaign. The edit offers a snippet of the work involved and showcases the creative processes and challenges we explored such as 3D modelling all the stunning products, designing fantastical unique scenes and crafting particle magic. With Covid hitting mid-production, our team relocated to remote working, relying on synced servers and daily briefing calls to ensure we were fully aligned with all elements of the project. The technical challenges we faced brought us through a wide range of software and plugins including Cinema 4D, Houdini, Marvelous Designer, Substance, Adobe Creative Suite, X-Particles, Red Giant and everything was rendered through Octane Render.