+230%

Conversions in the same period

+284%

Increase in ROAS

From pitch to performance, I reshaped how BLUNT showed up, swapping polished studio shots for real-world street style built for international audiences. I sold the idea with a test shoot, shot all five shoots myself, and turned them into organic and paid content that more than doubled monthly conversions.

The problem

BLUNT is a premium design brand, with umbrellas engineered so well that WIRED and GQ have written about them. Their photography matched that: polished studio shots that looked high-end but kept people at arm's length. None of it showed someone actually using an umbrella on a wet, windy city street.

BLUNT wanted to stay premium but feel more approachable, and they had no street-style photography to build from.

Three things stood in the way:

Premium vs. relatable. Loosening up the look couldn't cheapen a brand built on design and engineering.
Proof in the real world. The product's promise is strength in bad weather, and a studio can't show that.
Buy-in. There was no street-style precedent, so BLUNT had to back an untested look, and back me to shoot it.

My Role

Product storytelling: put the product's promise in the frame

Moved BLUNT's paid content from studio product shots to real people in real cities, showing the umbrella doing its job without losing the premium feel.
Shaped how BLUNT showed up for the markets they were targeting, New York and London, while keeping their core cues of design, durability and reliability.
Turned every shoot into a lifestyle content library, so each day on set fed many rounds of fresh ads, organic social, emails, and web content.

Creative enablement: built a new visual style

Concepted, directed and photographed every shoot, from idea to final edit.
Turned the shoots into BLUNT's paid content: static and platform-native ads, with clean typography that kept the brand cues.
Kept every shoot on time and on budget.

Growth: made brand content perform

Grew the account: proposed and ran a small test shoot to prove the idea, which won four paid shoots.
Owned how the new content performed in paid, delivering a 284% increase in ROAS and 230% more monthly conversions.
Used AI tools to speed up ad variations and refreshes.

Key Decisions

A new style is a risk until stakeholders see it working. So instead of pitching a mood board, I shot a small sample, and BLUNT could judge real images before committing budget. Once they saw them, they commissioned four paid shoots.
BLUNT was aiming at New York and London, so the imagery had to look like it belonged there. I shot for big-city energy: dynamic angles, busy streets, modern architecture, while keeping BLUNT's design and durability front and center.
Every shoot was just me, a camera and the talent. That kept costs down and turnaround fast, without dropping the premium finish.

BLUNT's promise is "joy and confidence in life's vulnerable moments", and that lives in a person's moment, not a product shot. So I directed talent to move naturally: striding through streets, navigating windy corners, real motion instead of posing. Bright canopies against city textures made the product pop without staging it.
Brand and performance content usually get made separately. I made one set do both. After each shoot, I repurposed the best images into multiple social-native ad variations on tight timelines and budgets. We tracked click-through and conversions, and refreshed creative as results came in to keep acquisition costs down.