The Idea

Cloud9's collection is aromatic. Sweaters designed to ease anxiety through scent. Which leaves you with a problem before you've started: the thing the product actually does cannot be photographed.

So we stopped trying to show the product benefit and built the feeling instead. The phrase was already there, stop and smell the roses, and we took it literally. A garden, and permission for everything to slow down.

Soft light, living things, and a world that felt like an exhale.

The Work

We built the garden rather than borrowing one. The whole set was designed and constructed with real florals, which costs more than a location or a fake, and was the only way the images were going to feel alive. A silk flower reads as a silk flower on camera, and a campaign about scent cannot afford anything in frame that looks like it doesn't smell of anything.

The other decision was casting. We cast across demographics rather than picking one customer and building the world around her. Anxiety isn't specific to an age or a look, and neither is wanting to slow down, so the campaign needed to show more than one kind of person being allowed to exhale.

The Result

The collection sold out within three months of launch.

For a product whose main benefit can't be seen, that's the number that matters. People weren't buying a sweater they could evaluate on camera — they were buying the feeling the campaign described, and enough of them believed it to clear the run.

The Team

Creative Direction & Editing — Sharuka S. (@sharuka.jpg)

Photography — Christian Cocuzzo (@christiancocuzzo)

Set Design — Claudia Galo (@claudiagalo_)

Flowers — Muscari Floral (@muscarifloral)

Studio — The Sonder Room (@thesonderroom)