Q2 | 2025
Axes Agency
Capabilities
With a focus on creative asset libraries and marketing campaigns for food and beverage brands.
Hi PHC Restaurants team,
I appreciate your response to my reaching out. As requested, here's a sampling of some of our past work for food and beverage brands. It's not exhaustive, but should give you a good idea of our style and strengths.
We don't work with ONLY food companies, but it's definitely one of our favorite industries to be a part of–especially firms like yours that prioritize sustainability and social responsibility.
I hope you like what you see here, and would be happy to chat anytime if an opportunity to collaborate comes up. Until then, take care :).
Executive Creative Director
A word from the founder
Before starting Axes, I was a creative freelancer. I worked for mostly large companies as a director, editor, cinematographer, photographer, motion graphics artist, sound designer, you name it.
Eventually I felt a plateau. I had a full roster of clients, but many of the key creative decisions behind the work I was touching were being made before I was even in the picture. I longed to be involved in the creative process at an earlier stage, so I created Axes.
To be involved in the strategy behind the work, my team and I had to be the ones developing the strategy with our clients. And so we adopted and refined a tried and true discovery method to pinpoint our clients' goals and the hurdles to reaching them. Our findings from this process inform the strategies we develop, and ensure that every bit of content that's created is in service of these goals.
This simple idea, putting strategy first, has completely changed the way we operate, and it's been a godsend for both us and our wonderful clients. I hope you find something that resonates with you in these pages, and even more, that it inspires you to take bold action for your business and for your life.
Mackenzie oversees our creative work and makes sure the bar is continually moving upward. In his past lives, he's crafted stories as director, cinematographer, and editor in the video marketing departments of large companies like Google, Facebook, Samsung, and Ubisoft to name a few.
At Axes, he's right at home assembling creative teams, crafting creative from the ground up, and making sure our clients are thrilled with the results.
Kate Chuang, a highly accomplished illustrator and visual designer, takes the reins on all of our design-based work, including brand identity, graphic design, collateral, illustration, and more.
She's the master of aesthetics here and is largely responsible for the impeccable visuals our work reflects.
Cameron takes charge of our web based work including designing and developing websites, amassing teams of artists and technicians to get any job done on time and on budget.
In a former life he managed web projects at a San Diego based digital agency. He now makes sure we're on the leading edge of things, aesthetically and technologically speaking.
We're a small shop with a large network of super-talented, reliable, and driven people behind us who specialize in a host of useful disciplines for your business.
Here you'll find selected case studies that should give you a sense of our skillset and experience in the food and beverage space.
From creating one-off ad campaigns, to complete asset libraries, we feel like we've found our happy place with this industry. It doesn't hurt that we get to taste test the goods either ;)
Luna came to us wanting to create an image library they could use for the coming two years to create social posts and marketing materials that would solidify their brand's style and unify its aesthetic across touch points.
They had a broad idea of where they wanted to take the brand visually in the coming years–which was a departure from the style they'd developed until that point–and a rough idea of the deliverables they thought they'd need to craft the transition.
Our task became turning their broad strokes into something concrete, and designing a path forward, which included concepting various lifestyle and product scenes, and executing the creation of images that would become part of their brand library.
Up to that point, Luna relied heavily on influencer created media and user generated content to fill in gaps in their social feeds. This was great for social proof, but not so much when it came to controlling their brand's aesthetic or telling their story in a cohesive way.
On top of this, due to the recent pandemic, they wanted to focus the theme of their marketing more towards holistic wellness and savoring small moments, but knew they would need to make this transition slowly over time so as to avoid alienating their existing community.
In addition, because the material we would be creating would have to be used for a variety of seasons and occasions, we needed to plan scenes that would be versatile enough to use year round as well as seasonal and event specific contexts.
Lastly, we knew the Luna creative digital team would need bespoke assets with which they could create their own design comps and marketing materials down the road. Lifestyle and product imagery would have to be easily removable from its background, recombinable, and versatile.
With Luna's broad stroke brief in hand, we set out to create a concept that resonated with their intentions and that would be possible within our time and budget constraints.
We put together a project deck that outlined the nuts and bolts of what the image library would consist of, as well as detailed references for the look and feel of props, locations, and talent. Character, clothing, and color choices were all informed by Luna's evolving brand guidelines and the story they wanted to tell.
We planned and executed both lifestyle and studio shoots over three days. Everything had to be planned to a T if we wanted to capture everything on our shot list, while at the same time respecting the timeline and budget parameters we promised.
Once finished, we selected hero images from each category, and once approved, developed reference grades for Luna's in-house retouchers to use as a guide in their work.
We wrapped this project fulfilling what we set out to do, which was to ease the pain of Luna's brand team by creating a full featured image library that reflects Luna's aesthetics and core values, and provides what they need to tell their story cohesively.
Our work allowed Luna's designers and social media team access to imagery that communicates what their brand's about in an effortless way. No more struggling to direct influencers, or trying to manage user generated content that clashes with their brand guidelines.
Now Luna is able to exert complete control over their own imagery and story, resulting in a more cohesive and consistent brand image across platforms, be it social media, ecommerce, or their website.
Luna currently sells their products directly from their website, or through major retailers like Amazon, Target, and Walmart. We ate many a Luna Bar during the time spent crafting this project, and they were delicious every time.
When we started out, we were quite agnostic in terms of the industries we sought work in, but over the years, we've settled into a nice little niche market that we quite like, and that's the retail food industry.
The following campaigns and projects were made for this market and we think they're a good showcase of our quality and versatility within it.
Know, however, that we can and do extend our learnings from all our projects into future ones, regardless of industry. Bon appetite!
A tasty way to shift your day into high gear, was the tagline for Clif Bar's latest creation, dubbed, Coffee Collection. In essence, it's a coffee flavored Clif Bar containing the same amount of caffeine as a shot of espresso.
While planning how to reveal their new creation to the world, Clif came to us to execute their vision in the form of a video marketing campaign plus an image and video library for their artists to pull from when crafting creative assets that would span across social platforms, e-commerce sites, and their homepage.
Before Coffee Collection, Clif's products fit into identifiable niches. Their energy bars like Clif Bar and Builders Protein were marketed as essential fuel for strenuous activities like hiking or working out. Other options like Pop N' Crunch were firmly in the snack category.
With Coffee Collection, they'd need to straddle the line and appeal to an unfamiliar cross section of their audience, those who enjoy and appreciate coffee house culture, but who might be too busy to stop at a cafe for a morning jolt of caffeine. Our job was to help visualize and communicate this world and to build a compelling visual library for the brand to use in the future.
We also needed to make sure we could capture the maximum amount of photo and video content in a single-day's shoot to both fill out the image library, and provide footage for the video assets we needed to produce.
Finally, we had to make sure that the live action content we captured would fit into the coffee house inspired visual system Clif's internal creative team had already developed, and to make sure that we could introduce later product iterations into the system.
We started by taking Clif's creative brief and narrowing down our casting options to fit their desired look. At the same time, we scoured downtown San Francisco for the perfect exterior locations to serve as a backdrop for the world of Coffee Collection, and found a cafe with just the right vibe to shoot the interior scenes in.
We shot photos and video simultaneously on small sets running in parallel over a single shoot day on location. This meant having two crews working at the same time, and providing direction and management to both.
After production wrapped, we made our image selects and began post-production on the video assets that would fill in the campaign–two hero product videos, a looping video to be used for e-commerce outlets and on Coffee Collection's homepage, and finally, a product video for the yet-to-be-released Coffee Minis.
We wrapped this project fulfilling our goal, which was to provide the Clif team with a world class image library that would make it a joy to introduce their new product. We brought the Clif creative team along with us every step of the way to make sure we were on target.
On top of this, the product videos we developed for both Coffee Collection and Coffee Minis added texture and movement to the coffee house world Clif envisioned, and reinforced the product look and feel in a more immediate way. They were now set to launch their new product line.
Clif Coffee Collection had a successful nationwide launch and quickly became a staple in our own office. They're great for early morning production schedules when there's no time to stop at the cafe ;).
These assets were created for the brand refresh of Clif's Whey Protein energy bars.
Services and deliverables included marketing strategy, graphic design, digital design, photo and video direction, and video production.
The concept, "Defying Gravity," was chosen to highlight the unique texture of the bars, not only to illustrate how light they are, but to also convey the chill vibe of snack time.
The product shots and videos feature orbiting ingredients, hinting at how easy it is to break the bars in half and bringing focus to the unique texture that differentiates Whey Protein from traditionally dry, chalky protein bars.
These video assets were created for the launch of Luna's new, smaller size product, Luna Minis.
Deliverables included a hero product video and flavor-specific social videos.
The hero video features a spotlight effect, envisioned from the outset, and translated into storyboards, which were translated again into video form.
This hero product video appeared on Luna's e-commerce site as well as third party vendors like Target and Walmart.
Static and video assets for Clif's rebrand of their popular Nut Butter Bars. We took graphic elements from their new-look packaging and expanded the idea into the overall world of the product.
Deliverables included hero product videos for various regions, iterations that focused on specific flavors and health claims, and social animations.
The hero video features a gooey liquid effect, envisioned from the outset, and translated into storyboards, which were translated again into video form.
Thanks for your consideration.
We'd love the chance to prove ourselves in service of your business. When you're ready, get in touch.