Campaign
The Concept
Deliverables_
Creative Direction
Art Direction
Photo Art Direction
Initial Photography
Styling
Retouching
Produced for ©2025 Crutchfield
Objective_
Create an expression for the 2025 Holiday season that feels reassuring to shoppers. Due to uncertainty in the economic landscape, customers are cautious about spending; they want to feel confident they are getting deals on quality products that will provide them with long-term benefits. While we want to clearly communicate savings, we need to do so without feeling cheap. Focus on the emotions and experiences customers will get from owning our products.
Concept_
In order to combat the anxiety felt by our shoppers, my first instinct was to create an expression that felt comforting, warm, cozy, luxurious, and familiar. My pitch was to lean into deep, rich jewel tones to help ensure the only thing that felt low was the price tag. I recommended we lean into vintage/brass propping to add hints of nostalgia, while also leaning into sensory experiences. I recommended selecting propping that evoked scent memories i.e. homemade garlands of popcorn and cranberries, cinnamon sticks, dried oranges, etc. While using textures like velvet, chunky knits, etc. to help our imagery feel tactile.
I noted that velvet and flocking were big in Michael’s 2024 holiday collections and I had already seen a huge increase in flocked figurines hitting their stores’ Halloween collections. I forecasted velvet and flocking would be big in 2025, and found through market research a lot of sites were supporting my ideas above as being strong themes for the 2025 Q4.
Results_
Stakeholders selected my concept as the winning theme, I then partnered with designers to create a color palette, while I photographed and/or composited representative imagery to finalize my concept into the expression shown. Throughout catalog production and post-production, I was a hands-on guide for the entire process, whether it was answering the question “what are jewel tones?”, to stringing popcorn garlands, or figuring out how to shape ribbon into wave-shapes for a toy boat. (For whimsy, of course.)