Case studyHealth-supplements D2C brand

Three weeks of launch creative, delivered in three days.

A direct-to-consumer supplement brand launching two to three SKUs a month, each needing a full creative set in a signature look: real product photography under hand-drawn illustrated overlays. Every launch meant a shoot, a freelance illustrator and an agency compositing pass — $4,000 to $7,500 and two to three weeks. We trained the illustration style and built the compositing route around the shoot that was already happening.

Sector: D2C health and wellness
Scope: 2–3 SKU launches a month, all channels
Turnaround: 3 days, shoot to final
Previously: $4K–$7.5K and 2–3 weeks per launch

80%reduction in creative cost per launch

3 days
from photo shoot to final assets, down from three weeks: $60K+
saved annually in production costs: 100%
of new SKUs on the same visual identity

All figures are actual project outcomes. Client names are withheld under confidentiality agreements.

The situation

A recognisable look, rebuilt from scratch every month.

A mid-size D2C supplement brand selling through Shopify, with a following built partly on how the products looked: realistic product photography combined with playful, hand-drawn illustrated elements, consistent across the blog, the product pages, social and email.

They were launching two to three new SKUs a month, and each one needed the whole set — photography with the signature illustrated overlay, blog headers, social posts, email visuals. A creative agency produced all of it: a professional shoot, a freelance illustrator drawing custom elements, then the agency's designers compositing and adapting for every channel.

The style was the asset and it was also the bottleneck. Nothing about it was reusable, so every new SKU sent the illustrator back to the beginning to draw elements that had been drawn, in that same hand, a dozen times before.

$4,000–$7,500 per launch: Photography, illustration and compositing, stacked, before a single asset went live.
Two to three weeks of lead time: No room for a reactive campaign, a seasonal moment or a second iteration.
$8,000–$22,500 a month: At two to three launches a month, that was the brand's standing creative bill.

What changed

Per launch, and then annually.

At this cadence the per-launch figure is the one that compounds — the third row is the first two multiplied by a year of launches.

Cost per launch: $4K–$7.5Kphotography, illustration and compositing
$800–$1.5Kan 80% reduction per product launch
Launch timeline: 2–3 weeksfrom the photo shoot to the final channel assets
3 daysthe first product through the new route, and every one since
Annual production spend: $8,000–$22,500 a month, recurring, at two to three launches
$60K+saved annually against the same launch cadence

What we built

The shoot stays. Everything after it moves.

We ingested the full library of past illustrated assets and trained on the specific thing that made them recognisable — line weight, palette, composition, and above all how the drawn elements sat against a photographed product. The relationship is the style here, more than the marks are: an accent illustration in the wrong place against the right product is off-brand in a way a customer notices before they can say why.

Then we built the route around it. New product photography goes in; matching illustrated overlays come out, placed with the hierarchy the brand had always used. The designers generate several directions in minutes, choose, and refine before delivery.

The photo shoot still happens, because the product is real and the photography is the half of the look that should be. What changed is the two weeks that used to sit between the shoot and the assets.

How a launch runs now

The same five steps every SKU, and the first one is unchanged from how the brand always worked.

Shoot the product
Unchanged. The product is real, the photography is real, and that half of the look was never the bottleneck.
Product photography
Generate the overlays
Illustrated elements produced to match the shot — placed against the product with the brand's own hierarchy rather than dropped on top of it.
Several directions
Choose a direction
The agency's designers pick from the options and refine, which is the step that used to be a week of waiting for a freelancer's first pass.
1 approved set
Adapt for channel
Blog headers, social posts, email visuals and product-page assets from the same approved composition.
Full channel set
Ship
Three days from shoot to live, which is short enough that creative stopped being the thing a launch date was planned around.
3 days

Since

The brand's marketing director's summary of it is the one worth repeating: creative stopped being the bottleneck, and for the first time the content was ready before the product was. The engagement has since widened to email campaigns, seasonal concepts and social strategy — work the agency could take on because the production hours came back.

Notes

Client not named under a confidentiality agreement. The sector, the channel and the launch cadence are described because they are what the work was.
No creative from this engagement is shown, and none will be. The illustrated overlays are the client's own brand property and the product photography is theirs — there is no redaction that leaves either publishable. This page is set without visuals for that reason rather than for want of files.
Figures are the client's: the $4,000–$7,500 per launch and the two-to-three-week lead time are what they were paying and waiting before the engagement, and the annual saving is that figure against their own launch cadence rather than a projection.

Product launches waiting on creative?

We can train on the look you already own and build a route from the shoot to the finished channel set, so a launch date stops being set by the production queue.