Illuminating videos that shed new light on Littman Brands
Littman Brands is renowned for unique custom designs and high-quality lighting solutions for the residential, hospitality and contract arenas. Led by Founder and Chairman David Littman, whose family has maintained a key leadership role in lighting design for more than 85 years, Littman Brands is represented by four distinct brands: Corbett Lighting, Hudson Valley Lighting®, Troy Lighting and CSL® (Creative Systems Lighting). Each brand reflects an individual DNA: identity, personality and specialization while maintaining the promise of uncompromising quality, expert craftsmanship and groundbreaking design.
Challenge: Whether it’s in a print catalog or online, consumers are often introduced to new lighting collections through still photography. While a photo can provide a great starting point for selecting a light, it can’t capture the rich details that can only be seen up close. Littman Brands designs and manufactures handcrafted lighting fixtures using exceptional materials such as microbead jewelry chains, shells, crystals and even unconventional ones like cutlery and beer bottles. Although each lighting brands’ catalogs are considered some of the best in industry, a photo can show off the beautiful product design, but it can’t recreate the dynamic sense of energy, sparkle and radiance that can only be experienced in person. Under DRS and Associates, Natalie Schlocker was called upon to showcase the rich craftsmanship and stunning details of Littman Brands’ products in a way that went beyond the basic lighting catalog and even website.
Solution: Natalie Schlocker and the creative team produced a series of online videos to showcase select collections from Corbett Lighting, Troy Lighting and Hudson Valley Lighting. Available on YouTube, each video offers an up close, behind-the-scenes look at each collection with casual (almost personalized) narration describing the details, materials and inspiration behind the designs. Not only do these videos provide consumers and designers with a closer look at the fixtures’ details, but they showcase the beauty of Littman Brands’ products from a more dynamic and three-dimensional perspective.
In the editing process, it was important to create a different look and feel for each brand, giving each one a specific and unique video personality in terms of color, music, pace of content and editing style. For example, Corbett Lighting’s videos feature runway-inspired music to reflect the brand’s high fashion glamour, while special attention is paid to the brand’s sparkling, jewelry-like details. Troy Lighting’s products are shot in a grittier, handheld style with accompanying folk music to reflect the brand’s rustic urban edge. In addition to the product videos, Natalie Schlocker and the creative team shot and produced videos on each company’s individual backgrounds. These videos give insight to the brand and the people behind the brand, intercut with factory footage, the crafting, assembly and the final fixtures.
Taking the experience to an even higher inter-active level: The product videos also play a significant role in a new technological enhancement that has been added to select Littman Brands catalogs. Digimarc Discover is a free app available through the iTunes App digimarc-icon.jpg store and Google Play store which has been incorporated into select pages in the latest Corbett Lighting and Troy Lighting catalogs. With the app, users can scan these product enriched photo layout pages and Digimarc will automatically link them to the videos on their smartphone or other mobile device. For example, if a customer is flipping through the Corbett Lighting catalog and wishes to see more information on Dolcetti or Houdini, he or she can use the app to immediately access these videos on his or her mobile device.
This feature has also proven to be a great tool to increase sales at the showroom level. Instead of simply describing the fixture that may not be on display, a sales associate can show these videos to their customers, giving them the full effect of the product and making it easier to envision what the products look like. In addition, the close-up product videos enlighten the viewer to the details and intricate beauty that defines each collection. To increase consumer awareness and spread the videos’ reach even further, Digimarc Discover will also be embedded in select ads in Veranda, ELLE Decor and House Beautiful.
As with any new technology or tool that faces the public, a new set of challenges arise. The new Digimarc app is in its infancy and the “mark” is imbedded into the graphic art so it is not visual to the eye. A QR code is an obvious icon (and most of the time detracts from the aesthetics of an ad or creative layout), so the Digimarc application needed to be introduced to the user in the catalogs and whenever its use is being offered. Natalie Schlocker addressed this situation by creating a custom icon for the lighting brands and used the icon within the directories and indexes of the literature. An introduction page and step-by-step instructions are presented right in the beginning of each catalog. Sales training and reminders have also been in place.
Through dynamic video production, interesting narrative and evocative products together with state of the art technology, Littman Brands was able to showcase their products in a way that more accurately represented the craftsmanship and exceptional detail that goes into their designs ultimately bring them much closer to life; much closer to light.