One Ocean Beauty
2022 Campaign
Baja Mexico
Working with responsible brands with a purpose is what we love to do. We know the opportunities that come with being a purpose-driven company (and being able to effectively communicate this) extend far beyond the sales, which is why it’s always such a pleasure working with brands such as @oneoceanbeauty.
Earlier this year we joined the incredible beauty brand who are making waves in the beauty industry in order to effectively tell their story.
The brand was born from a love affair with the sea. Rooted in it’s values and mission to help protect the ocean, OOB is creating a movement by providing clean and ethical products in an industry that has previously fed over 120 billion units of packaging every year (most of which is plastic).
Being sustainable is at the heart of this brand: the ingredients are cruelty free, sustainably produced by blue biotechnology, the inner and outer packaging is 100% recyclable and the shipping materials are also extracted from sustainable forestry.
One Ocean Beauty represents those consumers who are demanding that brands be accountable for their impact on marine life and for them to make efforts to protect and conserve our oceans, so it was an honour when asked to join them on a journey to bring their story and mission to life through the power of storytelling.
After many production meetings, three cancelled shoot dates across two locations and a small window to capture such an inspiring story, we headed out to Los Cabos Mexico, one of the most diverse marine habitats in the world.
As the dedicated underwater production team we researched the area extensively in order to ensure the location could best encapsulate the ethos behind the brand. We travel light in order to access remote locations and work with local production teams to ensure kit backups are always accessible. It’s almost a given in these environments something on your kit list will break - on this occasion it was Matt getting floored by a stunning monster shorebreak wave, leaving one of his trusted Canon lenses on its last legs.
It was important to us and OOB that the talent we worked with best represented the brand, meaning we had the absolute pleasure of working with science communicator ocean advocate Danni Washington and professional freediver and sailor David Langloiss, alongside professional model and ocean goer Zippi Seven and the incredible Ajok Daing.
This innovative brand harnesses the power of the ocean to improve the health of your skin by using ‘blue biotechnology’ whilst also giving back to the sea, meaning it was important to directly and indirectly communicate this through their imagery and film. Part of the production plan was to experiment and shoot in the kelp forests which had dissipated due to a rise in water temperature presenting us with a challenge to improvise in post production.
Shooting underwater is a completely different environment to shooting campaigns above the surface. There are many moving elements you have to consider and fast changing environments to consider. On this occasion contingency shoots were cut completely due to having to wrap the shoot early and travel back to the UK due to Covid restrictions, meaning we had to shoot 5 days of content in 2. Luckily our production team on the ground were beyond fantastic at helping make this a reality and our team were experienced enough to work simultaneously with talent in order to nail the shotlist.
This was a stark reminder that the ocean is forever changing and it’s an environment we must always respect and honor.
Following on from this campaign shoot, OOB partnered with science-led organisation Sea Trees in order to reforest the ocean by restoring kelp forests and suck carbon out of the atmosphere.
The ocean brings both balance and happiness into many of our lives and OOB has become a beauty brand that goes beyond the physical benefits by showing us what it means to feel good and do good.
We’re looking forward to the year ahead where we work together telling stories in order to make a space for brands with a purpose.
Photography: Matt Porteous
Film: Tom Webster
Production: Denise Shenton Productions & Tamsin Raine
Sound Tech: Javier Esquivel
Beauty Photographer: Terence Connors
