Daisy Brand

Client: Daisy Brand
Products: Daisy Sour Cream, Daisy Cottage Cheese
Role: Art Director, Photographer, Motion Designer
Deliverables: Social media animations, recipe content creation, photography

The Brief

Daisy Brand needed fresh social content demonstrating creative, unexpected
ways to use their products beyond traditional applications. The challenge:
make sour cream and cottage cheese crave-worthy on social feeds where food
content is intensely competitive, and do it in a way that felt modern, not
recipe-card conventional.

Strategic Content Planning

As part of the content studio lead role, I collaborated with strategists and media buyers to develop seasonal content programs aligning creative production with business goals and media calendars.

The planning process:

1. Seasonal Sprint Mapping: Identified key retail moments (back-to-school, holiday entertaining, summer grilling, New Year’s health focus) where Daisy products had highest purchase intent

2. Content Ideation: Led brainstorm sessions generating 20-30 content concepts per seasonal batch, considering:

Media placement strategy (Instagram feed vs. Stories vs. display ads)

Product usage occasions matching consumer mindset

Production feasibility and asset reusability

Brand positioning and competitive differentiation

3. Client Collaboration: Presented concept recommendations to Daisy brand team, incorporating feedback to refine shoot list balancing creative ambition with budget/timeline

4. Production Efficiency Planning: Categorized approved concepts into:

Existing asset adaptation (minimal new production required)

New photography needed (planned as batched shoots)

Hybrid approaches (new styling of owned product imagery)

This strategic approach meant one shoot day could produce 15-20 discrete content pieces serving 3-4 different seasonal moments, maximizing production value while maintaining creative quality.

Example: A single cottage cheese shoot yielded:

Back-to-school breakfast content (healthy protein positioning)

Summer snacking content (fruit bowl lifestyle)

Fitness/wellness content (post-workout nutrition)

Recipe inspiration content (cooking applications)

By planning content in seasonal batches rather than one-off requests, we could significantly reduce production costs while increasing content output.

Creative Approach

I developed a photography-to-animation workflow that brought recipe moments
to life through engaging motion graphics. Rather than static recipe cards,
I created dynamic visual stories showing ingredients coming together in
satisfying, thumb-stopping sequences.

The aesthetic leaned into bold, fresh food photography with clean compositions
and vibrant ingredients that popped against simple backgrounds. For cottage
cheese, I styled fresh fruit and berries to emphasize the “healthy indulgence”
positioning. For sour cream, I showcased unexpected applications like tacos
with fresh toppings, highlighting versatility.

Production & Execution

I led end-to-end production:

Photography Art Direction: Composed and shot all hero product and ingredient
photography, directing lighting for appetizing color and texture

Styling: Selected props, backgrounds, and composition and worked with food stylist on ingredient arrangements that delivered on strict client requirements

Motion Design: Animated the still photography in After Effects, creating
kinetic sequences showing ingredients layering, assembling, finishing

Format Optimization: Delivered assets optimized for Instagram feed, Stories,
and Reels with platform-specific pacing and text overlays

Technical Execution

The animations used a combination of techniques:

Photo compositing for layered build sequences

Motion graphics for ingredient callouts and product benefits

Kinetic typography for recipe information that felt playful, not instructional

Color grading maintaining product accuracy while maximizing appetite appeal

Outcome

The animated recipe content performed strongly across Daisy’s social channels,
demonstrating how photography and motion design can transform traditional
recipe content into engaging social-first creative that drives consideration
and trial during key consumer touchpoints throughout the year.