Back-to-school campaign photography for Contigo Europe

Contigo makes insulated drinkware built for daily use, including bottles designed to survive a school bag.

This campaign was commissioned directly by Contigo Germany and France, for Contigo's European marketing and Amazon store. It was not produced for the Australian market — the work was shot in Australia by Lisa Saad, Principal Photographer at Gotham Studios Melbourne, for European release.

Back-to-school campaigns are planned and produced well ahead of their retail release. The photography therefore had to be completed around Contigo's European marketing calendar and delivered in time for campaign and Amazon requirements.

The brief

Produce studio and lifestyle imagery showcasing Contigo's seasonal back-to-school products, key features and colourways for the European market and Amazon store.

The challenge — two production formats, one seasonal window

The campaign combined studio and location photography, and we were responsible for sourcing and coordinating suitable locations as part of the production. That's two quite different disciplines running inside one campaign, on a schedule set by a seasonal product release.

The products themselves included reflective and gloss surfaces requiring carefully controlled lighting, while colour accuracy was essential across the seasonal styles and colourways — a customer comparing a bottle on Amazon to the one that arrives will notice any drift.

The photography also had to communicate specific product features, not just present the products attractively. Feature-led imagery has to be legible and accurate as well as appealing.

How we solved it

We handled the campaign as a single integrated production rather than as separate studio and location jobs — including sourcing and coordinating the locations ourselves, which kept the creative direction consistent across both formats.

Lighting was built to control reflection on the steel and gloss surfaces while holding colour accurately across every style and colourway in the seasonal release.

Shot planning covered both requirements: clean studio frames for Amazon and ecommerce, and lifestyle imagery giving the campaign material real-world context.

The result

The final image library combined clean studio photography with lifestyle imagery, giving Contigo a versatile collection of assets for its European marketing campaigns and Amazon store.

Why this matters for your brand

Seasonal campaigns require careful planning, because the photography often has to be completed months before the products reach customers. Coordinating studio photography, location production and post-production within one campaign creates a consistent visual identity across ecommerce, social media and broader marketing activity — and it costs considerably less than commissioning those elements separately.

If you're selling into a marketplace like Amazon as well as running brand campaigns, brief both requirements into the same production. The clean listing images and the lifestyle campaign images should come from the same shoot, or they won't look like the same brand.

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Credits

This photography for Contigo was produced and art-directed by Lisa Saad, Principal Photographer at Gotham Studios Melbourne. Our team also sourced and coordinated the campaign locations, and produced the shoot as requested by the client. Gotham Studios Melbourne. We are your photographers. www.lisasaad.com