Capturing the business at work helps connect with customers and attract talent

Earlier this year, the creative team at Embrace worked with award winning photographer Slater King on a three-day photoshoot for Trivium Packaging. The aim of the shoot was to bring to life Trivium’s metal packaging solutions, showing how their products look in the homes and lives of consumers. The shoot was really successful, and gave us a great range of images to use across the new Trivium website and other marketing materials.

However, whilst working on the website design and content, both the creative team and the project team at Trivium realised that we also needed to tell the other side of the story, and help bring to life the people and processes behind Trivium’s products. This would help customers make a better connection with the business, and perhaps more importantly, really help Trivium with their recruitment needs.

Working with Trivium’s comms team, as well as department and site managers, we organised another three-day shoot, again with Slater behind the camera. This time we swapped our London lifestyle locations for Trivium’s office in Amsterdam, and their manufacturing site in Deventer. The Trivium team helped identify key areas that we could capture in both locations, with the aim to show the depth and breadth of people, processes, and skills behind every single product Trivium makes.

Day one of the shoot focused on Trivium’s brand new Amsterdam office, capturing a range of reportage style imagery across different office-based teams and environments. We shot a dozen different scenarios, working fairly freely and trying lots of different compositions. This meant by the end of the first day we were fast approaching 4000 total images (making us all very grateful the days of shooting on film are a distant memory).

The first day ended with a tour of Trivium’s Deventer manufacturing facility, which would be the focus of the next two days of shooting. The tour highlighted three key things. Firstly – noise! The combined sounds of dozens of machines producing hundreds of thousands of cans every day meant sound levels could rival most summer festivals. Secondly – the heat. It turns out big metal buildings full of ovens and other machines can get quite hot. And last, but by no means least, we discovered some potentially excellent locations and people to help us create some superb photography.

Over the next two days we worked with sixteen different departments around the plant, photographing nearly 50 different Trivium employees at work, with roles ranging from machine operators and electricians, through to supply chain teams and quality assurance technicians. Shooting a range of reportage style photography, portraits, wide vistas and cinemagraph videos, we aimed to tell the story behind Trivium’s products in as many ways as possible.

Along the way, we also found some time to make up nicknames for the machines, gawk in wonder at the driverless automated forklift machines, and take a few behind-the-scenes shots, decked out in the finest PPE Deventer could offer.

Trivium’s comms team, along with our team at Embrace, as well Slater and his team are all really pleased with the outcome of the shoot, and we can’t wait to start seeing the images in use.

About Embrace

Embrace is a London-based creative agency that delivers substance, not just surface appeal. With a knack for getting closer to a business and its communication challenges, the agency discovers unexpected opportunities, and creates powerful ideas that take brands further. Embrace defines, designs, writes and builds brand experiences for a global client base. If you’d like to chat to us about your marketing needs, do get in touch.