Caleño - one of the country’s leading non-alcoholic drink brands, have worked with Hacker since the very early days, long before their delicious alcoholic-free gin was stocked on Sainsbury’s shelves.
Founder Ellie Webb is on a mission to make ‘not-drinking’ fun, inspired when on a night out with friends she was frustrated at the lack of tasty alcohol free drinks. There then followed a year of experimenting with botanicals in her kitchen developing the drink. During this time Ellie took a trip to Colombia, her family’s homeland, and it was there she decided to inject the colour, energy and vibrancy of the country into the brand - Caleño Drinks was born.
Since launching the drink in 2018 Ellie has already enjoyed great success. Within two months the drink was being stocked in Sainsbury's and Amazon as well in bars all around the UK. But not one to be complacent, Ellie is looking to build on that growth.
She identified January as being one of the key months that would support that growth as every year more than 4 million people take part in dry January where they choose to stop drinking after the excesses of Christmas. Ellie got back in touch with Hacker in the lead up to what would be the first January since the drink was stocked in supermarkets, to photograph aspirational, product and portrait photography as well as animation videos to use in their digital marketing campaigns.
Hacker worked with Ellie right from the initial concept helping her develop the brief and expand her ideas so the photography and animation would represent Caleño's core values which are: movement, dance and fun. Ultimately Ellie was looking to create content to engage and grow their audience on Instagram as that is the key digital channel her market use. To increase engagement, Hacker also developed concepts for animated videos.
The shoot took place over 2 days in a studio in Bristol. The first day focussed on shooting still and animated aspirational product shots. Stylist Allie Wood was bought in to source and set up props and clothing in bright colours with a South American flavour to represent the brand’s Colombian heritage. The second day Hacker shot engaging portrait photography using three models from Mustard.
“Spending a couple of days shooting with Ellie and the Caleño team in the studio enabled us to create a wide range of varied and engaging content for the brand to use on social media for the next six months.” Hacker explains. “It was really exciting to work on this project right from the concept as generating creative ideas for shoots is where I really add value to shoots for clients.”