Overview
Clif made a name for themselves selling energy bars made to be eaten while hiking, or after a workout. Clif Thins was a departure, meant to be a snacking product that tasted indulgent but didn’t come with the hit to your health like a lot of other products in the space.
The distinct form factor and health stats led Clif’s creative team to design a world around the theme, Light as Air.
The concept played up the thin form of the bars and metaphorically hinted at the light calorie count and sugar content by having the bars float as if weightless, twisting and turning in the air.
The challenge for us then, was to find a way to realize this vision in the most efficient and versatile way possible, while still allowing for the fact that the product was still in development and the final look of the real bars and packaging were still being finessed.
Approach
When we sat down to solidify our approach, two options came to the forefront. We would either shoot 360º photography of the real bars to create building blocks that we could use in the campaign videos, or we would create 3D models of the bars and wrappers to be used in the same way, but might allow more flexibility if for example the packaging artwork needed changing.
We ended up deciding on 3D models. We took high-resolution reference images of the pre-launch bars to match the texture on the virtual models. The shape of the bars wasn't finalized yet, so the Clif team directed us to use the packaging photos as a reference for how the production bars would be shaped.
While the 3D models were being finished, we had a studio shoot to capture the hand movements we’d need for the social videos. Once we had all the elements ready to go, we composited the real hands with the 3D bars and wrappers to recreate the scenarios in Clif’s storyboards.