Summary
We are in the holiday season where no matter where you go, you cannot avoid retailers letting you know what your friends and family probably want for their holiday gifts. Here on this podcast we aren’t doing a gift guide per se, but in this episode Lauren Stefaniak Smith and Kimmy Snow share with Daniel what they think makes a GREAT gift guide.
Key takeaways
- Determining assortment
- Assess whether your brand / product line / ethos lends itself to something giftable (and don’t force it if not)
- Makes me think about the VS product line of bras/panties v. sleepwear items like packaged PJs, robes & slippers, beauty giftsets
- Gifting isn’t really a time to push a new product; it’s more a time to push your best sellers; either as single items or packaged as a gift set
- Crafting a story through product is inauthentic & irrelevant – customers often shop for 1 gift item & this is not about building a cart
- Assort into items that are truly giftable
- Whimsical / aspirational: items the receiver would not buy for themselves; often expensive & luxurious
- Thoughtful: often sentimental or personalized; typically are not quick purchases and require longer lead times
- Practical: often the easiest and most accessible; tend to be less expensive
- GIFT CARDS, you cannot go wrong with a gift card
- Think about building an array of products that span a wide price range
- Buy deep
- Assess whether your brand / product line / ethos lends itself to something giftable (and don’t force it if not)
- Reuse of catalog imagery
- Here’s where you tell a cohesive story
- Would err on the side of reusing ecommerce product photography, but would use this moment to shoot a guide-specific editorial/emotional moment
- Gifts you’ve received that you love, or other great gift ideas
- Artist watercolor painting of a wedding photo
- Le Labo Discovery Set
- Vinebox 12 Nights of Wine
- Ember Mug
- 3D printer pen
Full Episode Transcript
Daniel Jester:
From Creative Force, I'm Daniel Jester, and this is the E-commerce Content Creation podcast.
Santa Claus:
Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho.
Daniel Jester:
We are in the holiday season where no matter where you go, you cannot avoid retailers letting you know what your friends and family probably want for their holiday gifts. Here on this podcast, we aren't doing a gift guide per se, but in this episode, Lauren Stefaniak Smith and Kimmy Snow share with me what they think makes a great gift guide.
Kimmy Snow:
Something else Walmart did that I thought was really fun for a kid's gift guide, which brings you back to those Toys"R"Us days of getting those catalogs in the mail and sitting on your tummy under your Christmas tree and circling and dog-earing the pages and all of that, they sent a sticker pack with their gift guide, and so your kids could go and put the stickers on what they wanted, and then that QR code brings you straight to, so it was a best of both worlds.
Daniel Jester:
That's right. This episode is the E-commerce Content Creation Podcast's Guide to Holiday Gift Guides.
Santa Claus:
Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho.
Daniel Jester:
This is the E-commerce Content Creation Podcast. I'm your host, Daniel Jester and joining me for this episode, a very special holiday episode, we're calling this one The Holiday Gift Guide, Guide. I have a couple of guests here, Lauren Stefaniak Smith. Hi, welcome back to the show.
Lauren Stefaniak Smith:
Thank you for having me.
Daniel Jester:
And my good friend and stylist extraordinaire, Kimmy Snow, Senior Stylist at Bass Pro Shops. Welcome to the show.
Kimmy Snow:
Hey. Thank you.
Daniel Jester:
That's not to say that Lauren isn't my good friend. We've gotten quite close, but full disclosure.
Lauren Stefaniak Smith:
No, you said what you said.
Daniel Jester:
I've known Kimmy since she was like a kid basically.
Kimmy Snow:
Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, we go far, far, far, way back, too far back.
Daniel Jester:
I brought you guys together for this episode. We pulled this one together a little bit last minute, and I've been wanting to do a holiday gift guide episode. I enjoyed doing the one we did last year that was a book club theme. But I didn't have a collection of recommendations over the course of doing a year's worth of episodes like I did last year. But I thought it might be interesting for us to have just a casual fun conversation about the process of creating a gift guide because this is a really interesting process that represents some pretty interesting creative challenges, both in terms of timing of when that content needs to be shot, decisions that you make about what you're going to feature and how you're going to put it together. Obviously there's a physical aspect to this and the physical printed gift guide, but then you kind of back that up with plenty of real estate on the web dedicated to funneling people towards the things you want them to buy.
So that's what we're going to talk about and where we're going to start the conversation, we're going to start really broad and just say what makes a great gift guide? And if either of you have examples, I'd love to hear from you, any gift guides that have resonated with you. I personally have found the last few years that there's been a resurgence in the print mailer gift guide.
Lauren Stefaniak Smith:
Yes.
Daniel Jester:
Really nice papers, obviously companies putting a lot of work, a lot of, I don't want to characterize any of these brands as mid-tier and be wrong about it, but thinking about a company like Filson, not a huge, huge company, but they've got some weight behind their creative team and they can put out a really nice printed gift guide. And obviously, I get a lot of gift guides for Filson and brands like that. So Lauren, let's go to you first. What in your opinion, at a high level makes a great gift guide?
Lauren Stefaniak Smith:
I love being here for this episode. I don't think you knew this when you reached out, but I pride myself on being the best gift giver, and I talk about it all the time.
Daniel Jester:
It doesn't really surprise me. That fact doesn't surprise me about you.
Lauren Stefaniak Smith:
I'm not humble about it at all. I would talk about it any opportunity I could get. And so I think for me, gift giving, what makes a great gift guide, super high level, wide assortment of things that aren't going to sell out. So it has to be bought deep into. The last thing you want is somebody to click into something that you spent so much time curating and then it's like filled out, try again.
Daniel Jester:
Absolutely. That's super frustrating to get not even a gift guide, but get served an ad for something that you click through to and they're not just out of your size, that's a little bit of a bummer, but out of stock completely. A cardinal sin of gift guides, I would say.
Lauren Stefaniak Smith:
It is. And I think when we talk about printed gift guides versus digital, I'm a little bit more lenient on a digital gift guide if something sold out because things move fast on the internet. Versus if something's printed, you have to feel really confident about what you're putting in there and that you're not going to create a terrible customer experience.
Daniel Jester:
Kimmy, what in your opinion, thinking about gift guides that you've either worked on? Because you at Bass Pro, it's worth mentioning, if anyone who's seen a Bass Pro commercial in the last three years, Kimmy worked on that commercial, and in fact, probably creative directed some portion of that commercial. We can talk about commercials. I wasn't expecting to focus on commercials, but certainly if you are a company like, Lauren, Victoria's Secret does this as well, you're often backing up your gift guides through other marketing pushes, television ads and those sorts of things. But to direct the conversation back to the question, Kimmy, in your opinion, what makes a great gift guide?
Kimmy Snow:
I think like you said, we're in Christmas mode pretty much from June until Christmas. And so I think having just thoughtful, intentional, authentic imagery in with those gift guides. I really like what Amazon and Walmart are doing with the QR codes on each page. Something else Walmart did that I thought was really fun for a kid's gift guide, which kind of brings you back to those Toys"R"Us days of getting those catalogs in the mail and sitting on your tummy under your Christmas tree and circling and bending, dog-earing the pages and all of that. They sent a sticker pack with their gift guide. And so your kids could go and put the stickers on what they wanted and then that QR code brings you straight to, so it was kind of a best of both worlds.
Yes, it's print which brings back those magical memories of nostalgia that we all have, but then also brings you into the digital age and you get to see all of that imagery. And so for me, being on both sides of doing catalog and print, I think just being intentional, like you said, making sure that everything's in stock, but also making sure that everything's presented the way that you would utilize it and just things like that.
Daniel Jester:
Yeah, the QR code thing, I haven't seen that. I haven't seen Walmart's kids gift guide, but I know that Amazon has done a similar thing in the past with the sticker pack. I think it's smart because kids, some kids, older kids do have phones, but those are core memories that a lot of kids are going to create for themselves during the holidays, which is getting that printed catalog and daydreaming about all of the things that they want for Christmas or whatever the gift giving occasion is during the holidays. But you touched on a word there, and in true Lauren Stefaniak Smith fashion, we have detailed notes behind the scenes for this conversation. And so you mentioned authentic and intentionality in creating some of that content.
And Lauren, in your notes as we were preparing for this episode, I thought this was a really insightful thing that you said, which is, I'm just going to read it verbatim for the audience and then you can elaborate on it a little bit. "Crafting a story through product is inauthentic and irrelevant. Customers often shop for one gift item, and this is not about building a cart."
I think that that's super interesting. I'm not exactly going to push back a little bit, but I came into this conversation thinking that my favorite imagery around holiday gift guides are when you have a collection of products in one environment that feels like there's a little bit of a story there because certainly, you need to recycle catalog imagery, PDP imagery or whatever, flat shots, ghost mannequin shots. You need to recycle that to fill out your gift guide. But I love knowing that that team took all of these products, built this set and put together a little story for that one thing. So Lauren, elaborate on that point a little bit about authenticity and relevancy and focusing on what your customer's trying to do versus the story that you want to tell.
Lauren Stefaniak Smith:
I completely agree that I think the creative execution being a cohesive story is where you should tell that story. But when you're thinking about building the assortment of product, they don't need to be related, right? Because it's not like I need a shirt and the pant and the shoes and the socks. It's I want what's the top best seller that this gift receiver is going to enjoy as a standalone item? Because you're probably not going to buy multiple items for a person that creates this whole cohesive package. So for me, when businesses are thinking about merchandising, I think you merchandise your best sellers that don't need to necessarily go along together. But it's really on the creative team, on the backend to be like, "Great, I have this hodgepodge of product. Now I'm going to style it and make it look really good, into a shot." That that's what cuts through to the customer.
Daniel Jester:
We're going to use that as a segue to elaborate on some other things around determining the assortment because there's a lot of really thoughtful things that go into this. And we're not exactly the right people to have this conversation. Lauren, for a time marketing was under the umbrella of your leadership. I have worked briefly and it was years ago in merchandising. So I'm semi-familiar with the machinations around determining an assortment and that sort of thing. And obviously Kimmy, you and I have worked on a ton of holiday work together. And so again, we're kind of aware of how these things work in the broad strokes.
But you had a lot of really great insight as usual, Lauren, around determining an assortment. And the thing that you said about, again, I'm just going to read it because your words, I'm going to steal your own words from you. You really have to assess whether your brand or product line or ethos itself lends itself to being something that is giftable. There are some things that are obviously a great gift and then there are other things that you sell that you're proud of that people like, but maybe it doesn't really, it's not a gift. Maybe it isn't a gift. Let's riff on that a little bit.
Lauren Stefaniak Smith:
This is kind of ripping the covers off how businesses work in some ways and a really good strategic business buys into things intentionally for this purpose. If you were to understand how a business crafts offers gift with purchases, all of these things that feel like to a customer, "Oh, I got 40% off today. Maybe they just have too much assortment in stock for this." It's really not the case or shouldn't be like a business is thinking about these things and they're thinking throughout the year, okay, holiday's a time when people are gifting, what can we buy into in our assortment that is a gifting moment that we may not have any other time? This is also when businesses create gift sets of product where they say, "These five things make sense together. We're going to create a value proposition by putting these together and saying the value of this item."
Daniel Jester:
This is common ground that Victoria's Secret and Bass Pro both have, which is maybe there is and maybe there isn't a lot of things. But at both Victoria's Secret and Bass Pro, you can find seasonal gifts that are not in those stores any other time of the year. For the Bass Pro side of it, it's like, you're not going to include a bunch of phish hooks in your gift guide, probably not going to right, unless you're doing a little section on random ideas for stocking stuffers. But Bass Pro is going to push that pocket knife, flashlight glove combo kit that also is a great stocking stuffer or something like that.
Kimmy Snow:
We have 36 of those in assorted colors.
Daniel Jester:
Yeah. And so there is obviously a little bit of seasonal merchandising that's happening for a retail, I think especially stores that have a brick and mortar retail presence because those are huge margin drivers for your holiday period.
Kimmy Snow:
I think what you said also is a lot of these gift guides are kind of categorized in certain ways. Obviously Bass Pro, we have a hunting category, a angler category, camping category, things like that. But then there's just that generic gifting of sweaters and hats and gloves and those kinds of things. And I think breaking it out into categories is helpful when you are shopping, when you are trying to do that. I liked how Amazon broke theirs out into age categories. So you could be shopping for this bunch of ages and kind of see what people are gravitating towards or breaking it up into a price point category. I think that was a really smart way to go about when you're shopping, like you said, stocking stuffers versus a specific gift for one specific person. I really liked how that's been spread out.
Daniel Jester:
I'm going to hit you with a category that I know we've all shopped for, we've all shopped for this category. But I've personally have never seen a company specifically call it out, which is the random thing that you buy that's a great generic gift for the person you weren't expecting to see. Am I wrong on this? In the past, I've gone for a bottle of wine. That's usually a pretty safe bet. Bring a couple extra bottles of wine to the family Christmas party because you never know which cousin's going to randomly show up that you weren't really prepared for.
So on that note, sometimes we need to buy things that are just giftable without necessarily knowing the person that they're going to. On the topic of things that are giftable, Lauren, you have some thoughts about how to push forward things that are actually truly giftable and what sort of constitutes a giftable product.
Lauren Stefaniak Smith:
Yeah. So for me, when I think about what makes a good gift, I think about one of three things. So is it something that's like whimsical in nature? Is it aspirational? Is it a luxury item that that person wouldn't necessarily have bought for themselves but might be a nice entry into a luxury lifestyle through this small gift moment? Those are typically more expensive but easier to find. Is it something that's thoughtful? That's typically something sentimental personalized, will take much longer. So you really have to have it together to be able to do that. And then the third thing is something that's practical. Gift cards I think are the perfect example of something that's a practical gift that's really easy to find them. They tend to be less expensive, easier entryway can't really go wrong with them. So when I think about things, I think about it in those three buckets. And then the pinnacle gift for me is something that's like at least two of those. If you could find a combo that really knocks it out of the park.
Daniel Jester:
Let's jump to a different topic, entirely different topic. You touched on it earlier on, Kimmy. One of the really interesting, unique and kind of unusual things about creative production is that we are in holiday mode. Christmas in July is not just a reason to watch shop around the corner in the month of July. Christmas in July, I have not done the deep dive on this to know for sure if this is true, but I would be willing to bet that Christmas in July partially comes from the fact that everybody in marketing, advertising, merchandising in July is focused on Christmas. That presents a lot of challenges from a creative production standpoint. The most obvious one to me is sourcing props and finding models who are going to be really good at pretending to be cold when it's absolutely not cold.
Kimmy Snow:
Yes. We deal with that a lot. Like I said, I think we begin our Christmas season in June and start working. We do a winter clothing catalog and we also do the Christmas gift guide catalog. So we have two kind of at once. Some of that imagery is picked up, but some of them, if it's winter, it's less Christmas-y, more winter. So we reshoot a lot of the products to fit so it can live past the Christmas season into the true winter season in January. But it is funny how especially we're in Missouri right now and so our fall and winter catalog, we usually stay close to home just because we're able to kind of fake it here. So we have our snow machine and when the temps are like 90 degrees but 3000% humidity and you have a snow machine blowing bubbles and those are just evaporating in thin air and you're just like, you're shoving it in and-
Daniel Jester:
Your hair and makeup people are working overtime to keep your models from sweating because they're wearing flannels and it's 85 degrees with 90% humidity.
Kimmy Snow:
We have the soccer mom, Mr... The fans are going constantly. You've got a full on swamping situation and you're complaining about how hot you are and then your model has 14 layers on and all of that.
Daniel Jester:
Kimmy, tell us a little bit about. You sent over some links to me with you. You had two different gift guides that you shared. You had your winter clothing catalog, which I think is a really interesting kind of standalone thing. And then you also sent over the Christmas gift guide. So just flipping through the digital gift guide that you sent, the second half is largely flats. There's obviously some shots here that were styled. By the way, this women's flannel shot that's a left to shot of a bunch of flannels where the arms are all intertwined. Is that you? Did you style that? That's got your name all? Yeah, I knew it. I could tell. It has your fingerprints... We have styled shots that look a lot like this. We've worked on them together.
Kimmy Snow:
Yeah. That's been one of my favorite things coming to Bass Pro because Bass Pro started with catalog from the very beginning and so we will always have catalogs no matter what. But anytime we get a new printed catalog, one, I go around the whole team, anybody that worked on it and everybody autographs the front cover, which is just really fun because I think by the time it prints, you're so sick of looking at these products because you've seen them so many times. You've shot 30 different cover options with all these products only to find out that they didn't use any of them because one of the products isn't going to make it to the store on time, that kind of thing. But then bringing...
Daniel Jester:
Or they put the little 50% off badge right over your favorite little detail.
Kimmy Snow:
Yeah, it's a Mike Wazowski situation. I'm on the cover of a magazine. But bringing that home and my three children, we'll flip through the catalogs and be like, "I know mommy shot this whole spread." They know that I did the model shot and the laydowns and the on white shots and all of that. So it's funny how you kind of see everyone's identity when you're going through. And I see all my stylists and I'm like, "Oh, I know this was this person and I know this was a photographer because how it was lit." So that's fun, the behind the scene moments.
Daniel Jester:
The catalog here looks like the front half is stacked with the stuff that you obviously shot for the season. And then the back half looks like it's largely, there's a handful of those studio shots that you did that were styled together obviously for the catalog, but then reusing a lot of what looks like PDP imagery to me. So I don't want to circle around a little bit too much, but I want to go back to this idea because I know Lauren, you had some thoughts also on using PDP imagery, obviously if you can. Because if you're printing, the images that you have may not be suitable... Although these days, honestly with digital photography, the line between what can be printed well and not be printed well, it's a much smaller gray area than it used to be. But what are some of your thoughts, Lauren, around filling out a catalog with images that you have already in the can and can be used?
Lauren Stefaniak Smith:
Yeah. I think, and we've touched on this in previous episodes, but the notion of usage rights and how long you can use an asset for is dwindling by the day. We used to live in this time of perpetuity, and like you say that now and people laugh at you. So I think it's really hard to reuse campaign imagery specifically. PDP imagery is a little bit easier to get away with, so I err on the side of reusing the product page, E-commerce photography, it's easy to strip it onto a different maybe holiday colored background or some of the ones I've seen that look really cool are creating complex stills in a festive shape like a Christmas tree or something like that. And then distorting your dollars to capture in the campaign space, the on-figure shots so that you can create a new asset generated specifically for this and you're not worried about it looking not cohesive because you had different creative projections by season.
Kimmy Snow:
That's one thing we focused on this year, which will probably live in our dam for quite a few years. But we just shot a ton of different wood color backgrounds, different pine cones, different greenery, different ribbon curls, things like that so that those e-com images could be placed on top or strategically used in the email blasts and things like that when they're creating those email gift guides that are a little bit more catered to a specific category of person or however that looks.
Daniel Jester:
We got just a few minutes left. I want to touch on a couple of more things really quickly. Lauren, do you have any past gift guides that you thought were just absolute home runs?
Lauren Stefaniak Smith:
Yeah, so I think I'm going to get nostalgic about Victoria's Secret for a second. We used to be so good at catalogs and that was our thing. When Christmas came around, we had a catalog called Christmas Dreams and Fantasies. It was 200 pages. It was ridiculous. If you looked through it would have really expensive items. The fantasy bar would show up in there, million dollar items that no one would ever buy. One year I saw a pink Corvette. It was just this literal fantasy world that they would create. And so we would do a really good job of telling a story and having that be our holiday moment. And I think about we touched on commercials too. Michael Bay shot our commercial one year for this. It was our thing.
Daniel Jester:
Is this widely known? I don't know if I knew about this. How many things exploded?
Lauren Stefaniak Smith:
There was a lot of fireworks in the background.
Daniel Jester:
He got his explosions in there, one way or another.
Lauren Stefaniak Smith:
He actually shot a few years in a row for us. But it was our thing. So if I think 2016 and prior, we used to do a really good job there, as did most companies. Catalogs were huge at that time. But when I think now, what's important to me and what I feel like is super successful is New York Magazine's The Strategist, I live on that website. Hot tip for anybody that wants to buy a gift, I probably got the idea from there.
Daniel Jester:
Well, how do you think the New York Magazine's The Dtrategist compares to New York Times Wirecutter? Because I love Wirecutter but I am refusing to give the New York Times any more of my money because it's just so hard to deal with them as a subscriber.
Lauren Stefaniak Smith:
Yeah. I find it pretty similar. But to me, New York Mag reads a little bit more Citi and younger. The wire cutter to me comes across as more of a Consumer Reports, I'm going to get a really good idea of if this is a good product or not.
Daniel Jester:
If this is a good product. Yeah.
Lauren Stefaniak Smith:
Yeah. Strategist is like, "Listen, this is what the kids want on TikTok. Here's where to find it for you old people."
Daniel Jester:
Oh, interesting. All right. So I can, what's up fellow TikTok kids... I can finally fulfill that dream of mine. What about you, Kimmy? Favorite past gift guides or if there's a gift guide this year that you loved, one that you've worked on, or just one that you've received or think is really cool?
Kimmy Snow:
I really liked Amazon's gift guide last year. They had a dedicated artist that did all of the artwork throughout the book, which I think was really just intentional and fun and a nice spotlight and you know this is hitting a lot of people and just bringing light to just different artists and different artistry in general. So I really enjoyed that.
And just kind of seeing how they are putting a lot more inclusivity into their catalogs and their imagery with different bodies types, different disabilities and things like that. I really loved how they incorporated that starting last year and just kind of growing from there. This year for Bass Pro, I loved our toy gift guide portion. I thought that was really fun. It was fun to work on, fun to do wheel tracks and little things like that in the studio. So that was another favorite of mine.
Daniel Jester:
For one thing, I will say this. Paper choice on a printed gift guide is almost always going to get me to open it. And a lot of brands have been using the sort of matte luster paper recently, and I'm just a freaking sucker for that paper. Honestly, they're not even... It really affects the sharpness of the imagery in some kind of negative ways. But there's something about that paper and the image, it still really, really works for me. But the gift guide that I got this year that I really liked was by a company called Fellow. Fellow makes, and you've probably seen some of their products without even realizing this is the brand necessarily, but they make coffee related, a lot of coffee related and kitchenwares.
The main thing they make is this coffee grinder, which for me, it's still aspirational. I'm a huge fan, very passionate about my coffee. My current coffee grinder, when it craps out, I'm going to replace it with the Fellow, but it's hanging on. Damn you OXO for producing great products. But their gift guide was really great and it was a lot of what we talked about earlier. They just kept it really simple. It felt very elegant, but still right on for holiday. These were probably honestly all shot in a studio on just basic kind of kitchen scene set up with collections of their products that just felt like home to me because that's a part of my kitchen that I really appreciate is my sort of coffee area. And it worked really well for me and it was really effective. There's not going to be any Fellow products under the tree for us this year, unfortunately. I'm still waiting on some of my stuff to break, but I really enjoyed that.
So there's one more thing. We're going to go a little bit long because I know that you both have great creative production stories around holiday stuff that I'd like for you both to have an opportunity to share. And then I also would love to for you guys to give that specific gift recommendation, either what you think is a great gift or something that you received that you really loved. So first let's go to Kimmy and I'd love for you to tell us about the holiday shoot with the dog.
Kimmy Snow:
Okay. So this was our Christmas commercial 2021. And the whole thing was funny because we did shoot true 2021, but it was summertime and we had rented out one of the most wild weeks of my life, honestly. I helped come up with all the concepts of what each room was going to be. And so we rented out five different houses. We'd get there at 4:00 AM, decorate for Christmas, shoot our scenes, tear down Christmas and do it the next day for five days in a row. The fifth house was, the family got COVID right before we went to go.
Daniel Jester:
Oh no.
Kimmy Snow:
And so we were scrambling and that was one of our biggest scenes. We were going to have a big 4x4 truck or offroad drive into the living room. And so ended up having to on set while we're shooting the Thursday shot, communicate with the team back in the studio and say, "Hey, we need to build a living room so that we can get this truck or offroad inside the studio.
So already it was just kind of like a chaotic, crazy week. So fun and I need to do something. But I had the sketch of what I drew out and then what was built. And we had a painter come and we painted the whole room and all of that. We set it all up, got everything ready. In that scene, we had one of the professional dogs come and he's supposed to bring, get one of the Bass Pro little duck toys and bring it to the family. Right before the trainer was like, "Let me get him familiar with this toy so he's not like whatever." He rips it to shreds. And we only had the one.
It's beginning of Christmas, it's going to be our Black Friday special. So we only had the one that was created and everybody looks at me because I sew in my pastime and everything and I was like, "Hand it over." And I'm sitting on the floor and I get out this tiny little sewing kit and in between takes, I'm restitching this duck toy, this dog toy. And I stitch it back up and I'll just literally throw it back in and they get two more shots and they get the take. And it's funny because there's a closeup take of him with that dog toy in his mouth and you can see my stitches on that dog toy.
Daniel Jester:
Wrong color thread and everything.
Kimmy Snow:
No, no, no, no, no. I'm a professional. But yeah, just shoving the stuffing back in and hand stitching it as quickly as possible. That was fun.
Daniel Jester:
Yeah, there's a couple of takeaways there. If at all possible, try to get more than one prototype dog toy, if you're working with unpredictable talent. Whether it's your dog or your model that's going to be chewing on the toys. Either way, you need to be prepared. And obviously sewing kit, that goes without saying any stylist worth their salt's going to have a sewing kit somewhere. But I know some studios that even have actual-
Kimmy Snow:
Sewing machine.
Daniel Jester:
Yeah, I don't know. What's the gender neutral term for seamstress? Is there one?
Kimmy Snow:
Tailor.
Daniel Jester:
Tailor. I guess you could use Tailor. Farfetch for a while I think we definitely had somebody who was skilled and would do this regularly. But it actually is an important thing to have. Garments rip all the time [inaudible 00:28:24]. You should have somebody on hand with the tools that they need to be able to fix stuff like that. Amazing. Incredible. Lauren, you've got a holiday story that you'd like to share?
Lauren Stefaniak Smith:
I do. No dogs involved though. So I had mentioned our Christmas Dreams and Fantasies catalog a little bit ago. And the last one we did in 2016, perfect Christmas in July situation. We knew we had to shoot. The creative team came up with this idea that they wanted to go to Aspen and shoot. It was 12 models, it was a giant production. And for whatever reason, the creative projection for them was chaps, cowboy hats, boots, horses, lingerie.
Daniel Jester:
Wow.
Lauren Stefaniak Smith:
So the images came back and I think everybody was just so speechless in the worst way that we were like, on one hand, this is absolutely beautiful, but on the other hand we were like, "I don't think we could use any of this."
Kimmy Snow:
Oh no.
Lauren Stefaniak Smith:
Most of it ended up getting scrapped. You would have the background plates of the beautiful mountains and all that stuff was pretty much all we could use. And then what little they did go forward with a week or two into the actual holiday season, they were like, "Guys, we got to pull every image with a cowboy hat. We got to take it down." So quickly devolved of the grandest plan just completely falling apart.
Daniel Jester:
It's so funny, also given the context of my obsession with Boot Barn's creative right now, which definitely has successfully elevated the cowboy theme in ways... As far as I know, they haven't dipped into lingerie and cowboy hats, but there's no doubt in my mind that that team could do it.
Lauren Stefaniak Smith:
They could.
Daniel Jester:
Yeah. And also, sensibilities have shifted probably. What year was that, Lauren?
Lauren Stefaniak Smith:
2016.
Daniel Jester:
Yeah, right. I don't really have any crazy holiday stories. The thing that just as a photographer, and it's been less of an issue as LED lighting has become better and better, but it was just always frustrating when people would want Christmas lights to be part of the shot. Because when you're shooting strobe, extraordinarily hard to get Christmas lights to show up very well. Often, you have to rely on post-production. Nowadays, the last time I shot where the customer, the client wanted Christmas lights, thankfully it was a tabletop shoot, so no people involved because that really makes it complicated. But I was also shooting with LED constant lights, which really helped that a lot. I love shooting sort of holiday themed stuff. Fake snow is super fun. I did a product launch for Ember where we were shooting in September, so they just said, "As long as we're shooting now these new products, we should shoot some holiday things. So we spent the last two hours doing a couple of very basic 15 second videos of just the mug sitting there and the snow coming down.
Speaking of Ember, that's my recommendation for a great gift. I think I've probably mentioned it on this podcast before. If I mentioned it last year in the gift guide, listener, I apologize. But I got to tell you, the Ember mug, if you live in an area, I live in a house, it's not really cold where I live in Southern California, but it does get cold occasionally. And I live in a very old house that gets very cold. And there's just something incredibly special about a mug that keeps your coffee or your tea warm to the very last drink. I can't really explain it except it just feels luxurious in ways that you can't understand till you experience it.
That last drop of coffee not being cold is incredible. For me, it's one of those things that's like, that's a great gift for your father-in-law or something, like a buddy who's always complaining about their coffee being cold or having to reheat it. Get the mug. I know that it's a turnoff for some people because there's an app associated with it. You only really need to use the app the one time. You used it to kind of set everything up and then you don't actually have to use it again after that if you don't want to.
Kimmy Snow:
Yeah. So I got that.
Daniel Jester:
That's my recommendation
Kimmy Snow:
... This year [inaudible 00:32:12].
Daniel Jester:
Did you get it for him this year? He's going to get it this year?
Kimmy Snow:
Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel Jester:
That's amazing. I was going to get one for your dad actually, Kimmy.
Kimmy Snow:
Yeah, you should. My husband's a stay-at-home dad and he always, which I feel like is a constant thing, you set your coffee down and then forget about it and don't know where it is, and then find it later in the day. I just always see him, he'll just like chug his black coffee cold, take it like a shot.
Daniel Jester:
And it's such a sad feeling to just be like, "Oh, I don't want to waste this coffee, so I'm just going to"... Yeah. But the Ember mug really, truly, it's one of those things that it's hard to justify buying for yourself or just buying randomly because it's like upwards of a hundred plus dollars. But as a gift, it's an exceptional gift that I promise you, it's worth it. It's worth dealing with. The way that the handle's recharging the mug, I think is really elegant. You do have to have a kind of dedicated space for it, but it's not hard to make that. I think it's a really cool gift. Lauren, what would be your, could be either one, a gift that you've received that you really loved, or a gift that you think is a great gift to give somebody in general?
Lauren Stefaniak Smith:
So I think my top gift giving recommendation is the Le Labo Discovery set, if any of you have seen it. Why I love it, I don't think I can sell it as much as you just sold that Ember mug. But their fragrances are gender neutral, so it doesn't matter who you want to buy it for. And it also is a surprisingly low price point for what their actual products are. So it's like a really nice, easy, doesn't break the bank entry into a luxury item for somebody that's also personalized. When you go to buy it, you can put their name on it, so when they get the package, it says their name, which is really nice.
Daniel Jester:
What about you, Kimmy?
Kimmy Snow:
I am very much in purchasing children gifts right now for my three kids. And I have very science-based, but creative children. And so something that we found for our 10-year-old daughter, which she's almost aging out of toys, but not quite a tween yet, we purchased a 3D pen for her, which is really cool. So you can kind of-
Daniel Jester:
Oh, yeah.
Kimmy Snow:
Build your own toys and glasses. You can make jewelry, you can make anything like that. So I'm very excited for Christmas morning to gift that to our 10-year-old just because it's one of those toys that I think will live on, but it's also semi-educational, but also isn't just going to get shoved to the bottom of a closet somewhere. So I was researching for weeks and weeks and weeks and finally pulled the plug and we got one. So I'm very excited about that. So if you have an in between toy gifter and teenager, I think that's a good little gift.
Daniel Jester:
That's it for this episode. I want to wish all listeners of this podcast a happy holiday season, a wonderful winter solstice, and a Happy New Year. Although we have one more episode for you before we wrap up 2022. Many thanks to our guests, Lauren Stefaniak Smith and Kimmy Snow, and thanks to you for listening. The show is produced by Creative Force, edited by Calvin Lanz. Special thanks to Sean O'Meara. I'm your host, Daniel Jester. Until next time, my friends.