The strategy came first, developed in collaboration with Factory39 in Cyprus and Confid3ntial in Nottingham. Positioning, proposition and the story the brand needed before a single product reached a shelf. The launch rolled out nationally through Holland & Barrett and Boots.

Success created its own problem. Every new product in the range meant another shoot — studio, stylist, lighting, retouching, and the lead time that comes with all of it. The brand was moving faster than its own image pipeline.

We tested whether AI could carry the product photography instead: the same lighting language, the same shelf-ready standard, generated rather than shot.

One thing stood in the way. At the time, no AI image model could render text legibly, and every product carries a label. So the imagery was built in RenderPrompt and the packaging typography composited back in Photoshop — pack artwork dropped onto the generated product and matched to the lighting and perspective of each frame.

A hybrid rather than a purist approach, and it worked precisely because it didn't ask the AI to do the one thing it couldn't.