When Pinterest piloted their new collage ad format, they partnered with my studio (OLS) to create collages for selected brands who opted to be a part of the testing process. Best practices for collage ads had yet to be established, so we were able to help craft these through the initial collages we created. The brief was quite minimal, but it did state that collage ads should strike a balance between UGC and the brand’s style.
Moodboarding
John Lewis supplied us with a number of assets from their spring collection, both product shots and editorial images, and a colour palette from their spring collection. I first divided the assets into three groups based on different parts of the supplied colour palette, then began collaging them together.
Final Assets
Each collage features a different colour scheme pulled from the Spring collection, with a through-line of the classical sculptures and spring florals which were cut out from the campaign editorial images. Stock was not used for these collages, all elements were pulled from supplied product and editorial imagery. I found that having this constraint made it easier to keep the three collages feeling like part of the same family.
Reception
The project was approved with very little feedback, and we were then tasked with animating one of the collages. Following the success of this pilot project, John Lewis partnered with us to create further sets of collage ads for Pinterest, including the following holiday season menswear collages which were a collaboration between myself and a colleague.
