Case Study: Amazon Fresh x H!P Chocolate

Brief.

H!P Chocolate are a popular London-based brand that was launched in 2021. They create and produce creamy oat milk chocolate bars using ethically sourced cocoa from Colombia and have attained B-Corp status.

They are best known for creative flavour combinations and brand collaborations, including a personal favourite of mine, Salty Pretzel Flavour.

After a successful cross-collaboration between me, ManiLife and Amazon Fresh in 2023 - the Amazon UK marketing agency Hunt & Gather for another seasonal brand launch of a new Amazon Fresh exclusive product, ‘Figs in Blankets’. This was also a brand collaboration between H!P and the King’s Trust, with H!P donating 10% of proceeds to the charity.

I was briefed to produce food photography content of the new product, in Christmas inspired scenes; all to be captured at a London shoot location house.

The core usage for the food photography was for the Amazon website listing, the H!P website, product pages, and social across both brand’s websites and in press.

Approach.

To start the project off, the agency team gave me a great in-detail brief that covered potential shots, brand notes, and suggested props. I hopped on a call with the team, and used this as a blueprint to turn into a food photography brief treatment.

This saw 2/3 of the session being focussed towards lifestyle food photography of the product on a Christmas tree and poking out of a stocking at a fireplace. This included wider hero shots and the creation of GIFs for Instagram Story content.

The last 1/3 of the session would be more food photography focussed with the bars being shot on a red brand colour-matched background, with a stocking featuring in one, and a stop motion GIF of a bar dropping and exploding chocolate chunks and pieces of figs.

As this was a three-brand collaboration, there was multiple brand guidelines to adhere to when developing their art direction into mood boards, and prop shopping for items that would dress the space. Being a Christmas tree fanatic, but it being early November, I was, fortunately, able to source a Christmas tree in South London, which just fit into my car with the wood and materials to produce their backgrounds for the flat lay food photography.

Although more art direction than food styling, I brought food stylist Mandy Thompson on board to style the location with me on the day, and to style the food in the food-based scenes.

Captured on-location over one day, we captured some really strong content of the product and a collection of really fun GIFs for social media.

The retouched content was delivered within 72-hours and it was great to see it in press, digital and being featured online.