Four days on the Bali coast, one launch series — taking a French acetate house from look-book to campaign.

The brief

Arthod's first two collections had been shot on white seamless. Beautiful product photography, but it didn't tell anyone who the eyewear was for. Julien wanted the next series — the Coastal Series — to feel like a film still: lived-in, golden, slightly cinematic. The frames are designed in France, but the buyer wears them everywhere — surf trips, summer in the south, weeks on the Bali coast. We shot the campaign where the customer actually lives in the product.

The output had to do three jobs at once. It had to launch the collection on the brand's own channels, carry a full quarter of paid media on Meta and TikTok, and earn press coverage in the French and Italian style press. One shoot, three audiences, one consistent visual world.

The plan

Four days, two locations on the Bali Bukit. Two days at sunset on the cliffs above Uluwatu — limestone, salt air, golden-hour side-light, ocean blurred behind the cast. Two days in the warungs and laneways of the south — woven rattan, amber pendant lights, pendants and shells styled into frame. Cast members chosen for their faces and their wardrobes more than their followings; both fit the frames the way the founder had drawn them, both in the kind of ikat shirts and shell jewellery the Arthod Eyewear customer actually wears on a trip.

We shot photo and motion together every day, the same way we work for hospitality clients. Each frame was tagged for end use before we left for the location: paid social first frame, e-commerce hero, press kit pull, retail line sheet. Nothing speculative.

What we delivered

• 1 hero brand film, 60 seconds — 16:9 web hero, 9:16 vertical for paid, 6-second cutdowns for performance
• 12 short-form reels covering on-face, lifestyle, product detail and a founder voice-over piece
• 40 fully edited campaign stills — on-figure, environmental and product detail
• A clean product detail set of every SKU in the collection, on natural materials, retouched for retail
• French and English subtitled cuts of the hero film for press distribution
• Selects within 72 hours, full delivery in 21 days

The outcome

The launch campaign went live three weeks after wrap. Across the first 60 days of paid, Arthod Eyewear hit a blended 3.4× ROAS — strong for a premium accessories launch and well above the brand's previous campaigns. The hero film and product detail set were picked up by two French style publications as part of editorial features on independent French eyewear, placements that became the lead reference in the brand's first wholesale conversations with retailers in Paris, Milan and Sydney.

More importantly for a young brand: the campaign gave Arthod Eyewear a visual world that the team can keep building inside. The crop, the light, the props, the cast direction — all documented and reusable.

What we'd do again

• Plan around the founder's actual reference world, not a moodboard built from competitors. The strongest material in this campaign came from references Julien lives with daily — his car, his café, his archive of vintage frames.
• Cast for face and wardrobe before audience. The two cast members on this shoot have small followings; the work travelled because the images were right.
• Shoot motion and stills in the same setup, same day, same light. Two crews on the same day cost less than two trips and the visual coherence shows.
• Build a clean product detail set inside the same trip. It earns its keep on every line sheet, retail pitch and re-targeting ad for the next twelve months.