campaign spotlight: one of Le Tan’s biggest campaigns EVER
One of our recent creative challenges came to us from Heritage Brands and their iconic LeTan brand. Launching their new Gold self-tanning range, the Australian beauty brand challenged us to create a new TVC and a supporting stills campaign to run during Nine’s cult reality show Love Island. Challenge — or challenges, as it turned out — accepted!
challenge #1: Love Island is set in Spain
the le tan brand marketing team wanted the Uber Dark campaign to look and feel as aligned with the show as possible. activate location-scouting skills to source and secure a Spanish villa-come-party-house and fast! Luckily we had our creative director catherine stone and experienced crew on the ground in Byron Bay who delivered the perfect property in which we could shoot multiple indoor and outdoor scenes.
challenge #2: a tight schedule
We had just one day to produce, direct and shoot the 30-second TVC and a range of stills on location across different indoor/outdoors sets. We also had to choreograph some synchronised diving and swimming moves and do multiple rounds of late-night tanning to ensure our talent was immaculately golden by sunrise the next morning. Whatever it takes, right?!
challenge #3: wild weather
Despite being permanently glued to the BOM, one of the few things we can’t 100% plan is the weather. And wow, did we experience some weather. Ominous, fast-moving cloud cover started to roll in obscuring every inch of blue sky. A natural wind machine was warping the surrounding palm trees and the beginnings of a rain bomb had us completely up-end our shoot schedule in order to capture the pool scenes before the skies unleashed. Some serious top-up tanning was required (apols to our ever-patient hair and makeup team!) as the pool temp had plummeted to new lows, turning the talents’ tans blue. Our highly experienced producers made critical decisions fast and re-worked the shoot schedule on the fly which enabled us to work both around and through the weather. Back at crybaby HQ, our editors called on some expert post-production tricks to manipulate the conditions that we couldn’t control on the ground.
challenge #4: there needs to be life beyond Love Island
A key point in the Le Tan brief to crybaby was to create a campaign to promote the Gold range that would blend seamlessly into the world of Love Island yet allow the client to use the content outside that environment on other channels to get the most bang for their budget. So we created an engaging visual narrative that focused on the product and how it transforms not just your skin but your confidence, backed by an ear worm of a track. Because a tan is a total vibe.
Here’s what Le Tan had to say about us.
“Selecting the right creative agency can make or break your campaign, and we absolutely chose right when we enlisted crybaby productions to work on one of the largest campaigns in Le Tan’s history. There are so many attributes I could list that make them a fantastic agency to work with, however it was the genuine commitment to the project each team member displayed, day after day, regardless of the challenges the team had to face that was utterly inspiring and appreciated.
No matter which team member you were dealing with, they were across the brand and the project requirements, which gave an extra sense of confidence knowing you were in safe hands. I would have no hesitation to recommend crybaby productions.”
