Our Work

the client

Symeonides Fashion House Ltd is the franchisee of the well known and loved by millions across the world, Marks & Spencer (M&S), offering high quality fashion for the whole family, award-winning food and stylish homeware.

The company for over 60 years owns the franchising rights for Marks & Spencer UK Plc for all cities in Cyprus, excluding Nicosia.

the concept

The brief was to promote Symeonides Marks & Spencers’ Christmas Hampers through their social media and also use the same pictures for their online shop.

The client requested this photo shoot since they needed to have some personalised photos of their hampers in order to promote them on their social media and website. These channels were chosen because they are the client’s primary social media channels and the ones that most of their target audience uses.  

We produced a series of high end images combining seasonal props and products.

We aimed to create a dark yet cosy look and feel to bring out the Christmas spirit, evoke a feeling of togetherness, resemble family Christmas dinner table setups and an overall festive atmosphere.

Through extensive research and moodboards creation, we decided on the studio set up and proceeded in buying all the necessary props, to make sure that the end result would be the right one. We did that while keeping in mind the international guidelines and the need to have unique content to elevate the brand and make it stand out.

To create the mood we wanted to portray in these photographs, it was important to light our setups carefully as lighting plays a big role in setting the mood and creating an atmosphere. Two lights were used for this - each one at about 20 degrees to the left and right of our table and one light was higher up in order to illuminate the top of the products but also separate them from the background. The intensity of the second light was lower than that of our main light, in order to create this dark but cosy mood.

Lastly, we carefully chose the surfaces that were used - a black marble surface and a clean black cardboard. The reason for choosing black for both surface and background, was that we wanted the attention to only fall on the products and the colors and design of the packaging to pop, as well as highlighting the props.

In an 8hr shooting day, we produced over 300 photographs and ended up with around 30 final images. Being prepared and organized, having all our props ready and having already prepared a moodboard/shot list beforehand, enabled us to create our content in one full day of shooting, which resulted in having more content to disseminate on various channels throughout the course of the month. All in all, having an 8hr shooting day reduced the cost of the shooting for our client while also enabling us to shoot the amount of photographs needed for this campaign.

The Outcome

The Static Content was shared on both Facebook and Instagram, with the carousel images combined, from close ups with details to generic ones, with an aim to build the joy and inspiration of Christmas gift ideas. The ultimate goal was to engage with the audience and create the feeling of Christmas gifting in order to create the urge to buy what they desire, either online or in-store. These visuals were also used on two newsletters that were sent to the universal list of customers as well as to a list of companies.

The campaign lasted a total of two weeks and the Facebook and Instagram posts alone led to 232 link clicks and 13 website purchases. Lastly, the ads helped the posts reach 45,669 people with 138,073 impressions. These metrics based on the budget spent are considered to be very good, since only by social media advertising we managed to reach a great number of people and have a good amount of sales.