Portillo Wine Ad Campaign

I’ve teamed up again with Creative Director, Henry Alvarez on the new campaign for Portillo Wines.  It’s always good to know the agency point of view, so I asked him, “From a branding point of view, what did you want to accomplish for Portillo with this ad?  What was the Client looking for?”

Henry: “We wanted an image with strong appetite appeal as well as create a mood and atmosphere that would bring an elegance to the dining experience.  Our assignment was to connect Portillo Malbec with steak. We played back and forth with a strong tagline. We finally arrived at “A Cut Above the Rest”.  Once done we ended up with a strong consumer Point of Sale campaign that elevated the brand.” 

The shots we needed were broken down into three individual images, which would then be combined to make the different creatives needed.

1. Shoot the wine bottle alone and the wine glass alone.  That would go towards the first creative.
2.  Shoot the food + wine glass, then add in the wine bottle shot in #1, which would go towards the second creative. The shots would all be used in a mix of website use and advertising formats.

So here is the first creative, made up of the bottle and wine glass separately and put together in post.  There would be no way to light both of them together and achieve this same result, thus the decision to shoot each of them separately.

So here was the set for the bottle shot.  The main light is coming from 2 strobes with reflectors shooting through the 4’x8′ plexi on the left hand side.  This softens up the light so that the rich detail in the label doesn’t get blown out.  The reflection on the right is created by the silver card on the right, sitting on the table.  The two reflections running up and down both sides of the bottle are created by the soft boxes in the back facing in.  Lastly, I’ve got one more light on the floor with a beauty dish + grid hitting the backdrop so that there is some separation from the background.  Below is the shot.

The individual wine glass shot I don’t actually have a behind the scenes photo of.  I had to create a totally black room out of black v-flats.  The only area for light the was possible was from the back side where I had the 4’x6′ feathered off.  It was a one softbox shot.  Getting the angle right was the hardest on this one so that there was a nice reflection on both sides of the glass and the wine showed up just enough.  I fired the camera remotely so that I wouldn’t be in the reflection.  It was much more to setup than to actually shoot.  We did have to do a little post on the glass as even as much as we tried to clean it, there was still a little dust here and there.

Here is the version with the Argentinian Steak.  Although I don’t have a behind the scenes for this one, I used Dedo Lights to do the job on this one instead of strobe. They allowed me to spotlight what I needed and provide a low depth of field.

A little about the wine and the region…click the image to see it larger.

So that’s it for now…stay tuned for more…

Thanks to the Team:

Photography: James Weber, www.jamesweberstudio.com
Creative Director, Henry Alvarez
Food Styling: Ed Gabriels, www.halleyresources.com
First Assistant:  James Sullivan