Case Study: ManiLife

Brief.

Based in London, ManiLife are a popular peanut butter producer, that was started by founder Stu - with his love for Argentina, and all of the ways that PB can be used in cooking.

Moving on from 2014 and Stu moving to Argentina, and shipping a ton of peanuts back to the UK and his bedroom - the brand has grown from strength to strength - first being taken on by Gusto in 2017 boxes, needing 9,000 mini pots, to Waitrose taking them on in 2020.

Now with 3 core ranges, with a crunchy and smooth line for each (crunchy all the way!) - the brand reached out to me - wanting commercial photography of their eagerly awaited Organic range, to be launched in August.

Looking to build on the visual foundation already put in place, the content was to be on-brand, but also target older Millennials and customers more aligned towards shopping at Waitrose - with an aspirational look to the commercial photography.

Approach.

I started by researching getting under the hood of their brand, looking at their existing imagery, and brand guidelines. From this, I produced a pitch and art direction ethos that pooled inspiration from their strong use of brand colours, whilst inserting a more lifestyle-led, aspirational feeling to the commercial photography.

This was pulled together with a collection of bespoke wooden and painted backgrounds, as well as a collection of requested props from Amazon, great props from the prop house, and dappled light - to really push the organic vibe 📸⁠

I split the finished brief treatment into two types of commercial photography output; life-style led content, pushing the organic feeling content, with recipe pairings for both Smooth and Crunchy. The second portion was the studio-focussed imagery that kept the textured feeling from the lifestyle, but was more playful - the product laying on a bed of nuts, being stirred by hand and showing more movement.

Captured in-studio, the two-day session went smoothly and the retouched imagery delivered ahead of the deadline - for use in the product launch. It has been great to see these commercial images in the wild, and doing so well for the Organic launch.