Case Study: Lee Kum Kee Ethnic Brief

Brief.

Client Lee Kum Kee are a popular world-wide brand, also known as the original creators of Oyster sauce. Operating for 130-years, and based in Hong Kong, their range of worldwide and regional products can be found across Asia, Europe, the UK and the US.

Their sauces are popular with home cooks and famous Michelin chefs such as Andrew Wong, of A.Wong.

Their marketing team contacted me and food stylist Jennifer Joyce for a Q3 food photography brief; this time for their ‘ethnic’ market of ex-pats in three core European regions. The UK, Netherlands and Germany. Each brief had its individual campaign messaging, and the client required 18 dishes to be styled, dressed and captured. The core themes were:

- UK Theme: Recreate Hong Kong's Cha Chaan Teng local flavours.

- Netherlands: Discover Asian flavour with Lee Kum Kee.

- Germany: Open Sesame! Discover your Asian Breeze.

The content usage of the food photography would be for their digital touch points, POS, online recipes, and outputs edited into designed product cards - across the UK, Netherlands, and German markets.

Approach.

We started off the project with a production call - to learn more about the food photography brief and each region’s messaging. They also provided recipe and product pairing suggestions from their in-house brand chef - for the food stylist to then test and develop ahead of the food photography shoot.

Having worked with the client many times, I developed these campaigns into a food photography brief treatment. This would be covered over a 3 day shoot, with each region’s 8 recipes being assigned to each shoot day.

We used a tried and tested treatment of shooting 3 core food photography shots per recipe; a traditional food photography hero, a recipe pairing showing the product as a companion to the recipe, and graphic imagery of the food itself.

Jennifer worked to test and develop the recipes over a few days, and also picked out a great selection of complimentary props from her collection that she’s built over 30-years of food styling for cook books and editorial shoots. These worked perfectly with my own handmade photography backgrounds and an additional collection of backgrounds that I had sourced from the food photography prop rental house.

Over the three days, I created summery-dappled studio lighting that complemented each dish, and as a team - we worked together to capture all 18 dishes for the client’s 3 regional campaigns.

After sharing a contact sheet for the selects, their retouched food photography was completed, and it is great to see the imagery live across all of their touch points.