AI Product Exploration
Wrapped in Vanilla
Bath & Body Works
Wrapped in Vanilla AI Product Exploration
Project Overview
This independent creative exploration was inspired by a conversation about how AI might support product storytelling, digital merchandising, and lifestyle content. It explores how a single existing product image can become the foundation for a broader digital campaign.
Using a single existing product photograph from Bath & Body Works' Wrapped in Vanilla collection, I experimented with AI-assisted image generation to create PDP-inspired layouts, ingredient graphics, lifestyle environments, and short-form video concepts. The objective wasn't to redesign the brand, but to explore how AI might extend existing assets while remaining consistent with Bath & Body Works' visual language.
This project is presented as an independent portfolio exploration of AI-assisted art direction and digital merchandising. All concepts begin with publicly available product photography and were created solely to explore how emerging creative tools can support retail brand storytelling.
Nano Banana Pro Product Reshoot.
Creative Challenge
How far can a single existing product photograph be extended into a cohesive digital campaign using AI-assisted workflows while remaining true to an established retail brand?
Rather than treating AI as a shortcut for image generation, I approached it as a creative problem-solving exercise. Beginning with a single product image, I explored how AI could expand existing photography into multiple campaign assets while preserving the product as the visual focal point. Every concept was art directed to feel like a natural extension of the Bath & Body Works brand rather than a departure from it.
Product Reshoots & Lifestyle Concepts
Runway's Nano Banana Pro Lifestyle Product Reshoot App was used to develop the campaign concepts below. Starting with a single existing product photograph, I explored how AI-assisted art direction could extend one retail asset into multiple campaign directions while preserving a consistent visual identity. Rather than changing the brand, the objective was to demonstrate how one product image could support PDP pages, digital marketing, email campaigns, social media, and lifestyle storytelling through thoughtful creative direction.
What interested me most wasn't simply creating attractive images. It was discovering how a single creative idea could evolve into distinct campaign directions without losing its connection to the brand. From cozy evenings at home and seasonal campfire settings, to relaxed beach days and elevated luxury moments, each concept explores a different emotional connection with the customer while keeping the product at the center of the story.
Follow the evolution:
• Beach Escape
A fresh, carefree lifestyle centered around sunshine, travel, and everyday confidence.
• Campfire & Comfort
Warmth, nostalgia, adventure, and seasonal escape.
• Comfort Ritual | Quiet Moments | Weekend Reset
Cozy routines, self-care, softness, and everyday comfort.
• The Golden Hour
Quiet luxury, elegance, confidence, and intentional self-care.
Those aren't simply different campaigns. They are different emotional lifestyles built around the same product. That's where art direction becomes important. The product hasn't changed. The brand hasn't changed. The feeling changed. The emotional story being told changed. And that change, shaped everything else.
Wrapped in Vanilla – Beach Escape
Concept: Beach Escape reimagines Wrapped in Vanilla as an effortless everyday fragrance for warm-weather adventures. Rather than focusing on cozy indoor moments, this campaign positions the product alongside sunshine, coastal getaways, and carefree afternoons. The relaxed styling, natural light, and seaside setting present the fragrance as a companion for vacations, weekend escapes, and simple moments of joy, proving that a warm vanilla scent can feel just as at home by the ocean as it does beside a fireplace.
Target Audience:Young women and adults, approximately ages 18–34, who embrace travel, outdoor living, and effortless beauty. Consumers who enjoy approachable luxury, seasonal fragrances, and products that become part of their everyday lifestyle rather than something reserved for special occasions.
Environment: Bright coastal settings with soft sand, ocean views, natural textures, and warm sunlight. Beach towels, sandals, woven accessories, and relaxed styling reinforce a feeling of simplicity, freedom, and casual elegance while allowing the product to remain the visual focal point.
Mood: Fresh, carefree, optimistic, and sun-kissed. The campaign captures the feeling of escaping everyday routines, celebrating warmth, confidence, and the simple pleasures of summer.
Wrapped in Vanilla – Campfire and Comfort
Concept: Campfire & Comfort explores the nostalgic side of Wrapped in Vanilla, transforming the fragrance into the centerpiece of a cozy evening retreat. Surrounded by books, blankets, warm drinks, and the glow of a stone fireplace, the campaign highlights fragrance as part of an experience rather than simply a product. The emphasis shifts from self-care alone to creating memorable moments filled with warmth, comfort, and quiet connection.
Target Audience: Adults ages 25–45 who are drawn to seasonal fragrances, cozy interiors, weekend cabin escapes, and meaningful rituals. It also speaks to gift shoppers and consumers who associate fragrance with comfort, nostalgia, and the changing seasons.
Environment: A rustic cabin filled with natural wood, soft textiles, flickering firelight, and thoughtfully placed personal details. Warm lighting, layered textures, books, throw pillows, compass, blankets, and steaming mugs of hot chocolate create an inviting atmosphere that feels intimate, restorative, and authentic.
Mood: Warm, nostalgic, comforting, and inviting. The campaign evokes the feeling of slowing down, disconnecting from daily demands, and embracing the simple pleasures of a quiet evening surrounded by comfort.
Wrapped in Vanilla – Comfort Ritual | Quiet Moments | Weekend Reset
Concept: These three related concepts position Wrapped in Vanilla as an essential part of everyday self-care. Rather than focusing on dramatic moments or aspirational luxury, it celebrates the small rituals that bring comfort and balance to daily life. Whether enjoying a quiet morning, a peaceful weekend, or an evening at home, the fragrance becomes a familiar companion that transforms ordinary routines into intentional moments of relaxation.
Target Audience: Young women and adults, approximately ages 18–34, who value self-care, comfort, and affordable indulgence. Individuals who appreciate products that fit naturally into their everyday routines while creating small moments of joy and emotional well-being.
Environment: A warm, inviting home filled with soft knit textures, fresh baked cookies, gentle natural light, and comfortable furnishings. Every element reinforces a sense of familiarity, calm, and lived-in authenticity, allowing the product to feel seamlessly integrated into daily life.
Mood: Cozy, peaceful, comforting, and restorative. The campaign captures the quiet satisfaction of slowing down, creating space for yourself, and finding happiness in life's simple routines.
Wrapped in Vanilla – The Golden Hour
Concept: The Golden Hour reimagines Wrapped in Vanilla as a luxurious evening ritual for women entering their most confident and fulfilled years. Rich textures, warm lighting, elegant furnishings, and refined styling create an atmosphere of quiet indulgence, where fragrance becomes part of a personal moment of reflection, comfort, and self-care. Rather than emphasizing youth or spontaneity, the campaign celebrates confidence, sophistication, and the simple pleasure of slowing down at the end of the day.
Target Audience: Adults ages 40–60, with a particular focus on women entering their golden years who value comfort, elegance, and quality. Financially established professionals, entrepreneurs, and retirees who appreciate beautifully designed products, meaningful rituals, and everyday luxuries that elevate their lifestyle.
Environment:An elegant bedroom designed around comfort and understated luxury. Rich fabrics, warm golden light, fresh flowers, refined furnishings, candles, books, and carefully chosen details create an atmosphere that feels timeless, graceful, and quietly indulgent, allowing the fragrance to become part of a meaningful evening ritual.
Mood: Sophisticated, warm, serene, and quietly indulgent. The campaign evokes the feeling of winding down after a successful day, inviting the viewer to embrace moments of self-care, relaxation, and graceful living.
The above studies also became useful reference assets for later motion graphic experiments, helping maintain consistency between still imagery and video concepts.
Ingredient Storytelling
ChatGPT | GPT Image, Main Ingredient Layout – Wrapped in Vanilla
Image Concepts: One of the visual elements I enjoy most across the Bath & Body Works website is the use of ingredient compositions to communicate fragrance notes and key botanicals. Rather than simply listing ingredients, these graphics help tell the story behind each fragrance and create an immediate visual connection to the product.
For this exploration, I created several ingredient studies inspired by that visual approach, using combinations of vanilla bean, aloe vera, shea butter, cocoa, cinnamon, and water to reflect the warmth and comfort of Wrapped in Vanilla. The objective wasn't to duplicate Bath & Body Works' existing ingredient graphics, but to understand the visual principles behind them and explore additional directions that could feel at home within the brand.
ChatGPT Ingredient Layout Mockup – Wrapped in Vanilla Image Concept
Creative Scalability
What began as a single retail asset gradually evolved into a broader creative exploration. Rather than creating isolated concepts, I treated the original product photograph as the foundation for a growing family of campaign assets, exploring how one idea could extend across multiple applications while maintaining a consistent visual language.
From that single product photograph, I developed:
Together, these explorations demonstrate how thoughtful art direction can extend a single creative idea across multiple customer touchpoints while maintaining brand consistency.
Motion Graphic Concepts
After exploring still imagery, I wanted to see whether the same product photography could extend naturally into short-form motion without losing the brand's visual identity.
These concepts examine how AI-assisted video could support PDP pages, digital campaigns, and social media by adding subtle movement and atmosphere without requiring a traditional photo or video shoot. While experimental, they demonstrate how static product photography can become engaging digital content through thoughtful creative direction. Still imagery establishes a product. Motion gives it a pulse.
Nano Banana Pro Product Reshoot
Wrapped In Vanilla – Golden Hour
ChatGPT | GPT Image, Main Ingredient Layout:
Wrapped In Vanilla
Runway (Kling 3.0 Standard) Lifestyle Product Reshoot:
Wrapped In Vanilla – Golden Hour
Runway (Kling 3.0 Standard) Lifestyle Product Reshoot:
Wrapped In Vanilla – Golden Hour
ChatGPT | GPT Image, Main Ingredient Layout:
Wrapped In Vanilla
Nano Banana Pro Product Reshoot:
Wrapped In Vanilla – Campfire and Comfort
Nano Banana Pro Lifestyle Product Reshoot: Wrapped in Vanilla – Quiet Moments
Runway (Aleph 2.0) Product Shot, Lifestyle Video: Wrapped in Vanilla – Quiet Moments
Campaign Exploration
After establishing several successful lifestyle directions, I explored how a single campaign could be expanded into a coordinated library of marketing assets. Using Runway's Cinematic Brainstorm workflow, I generated multiple compositions around the same creative direction, producing hero images, close-up product photography, environmental scenes, and lifestyle moments suitable for PDP pages, email campaigns, social media, and digital advertising.
Runway Cinematic Brainstorm (Gemini 3.0 Pro): Wrapped in Vanilla – Comfort Ritual Product Placement Concepts
Runway (Nano Banana Pro): Wrapped in Vanilla – Comfort Ritual Hero Concept
Final Thoughts
What started with a single product photograph and an experiment with AI using Runway as a new creative tool, ended with a library of campaign assets spanning lifestyle photography, ingredient storytelling, motion concepts, and four distinct emotional directions, each built for a different customer, each true to the brand. Not because the technology made it easy. Because the creative decisions made it coherent.
That's the part AI cannot do. It can generate. It cannot decide what matters, what fits, what to keep, or what to throw away. Those judgments still belong to the person directing the work.
The work proved itself on multiple levels. Runway delivered production-worthy product imagery and motion concepts capable of supporting a real retail campaign. The case study itself, built from a single downloaded photograph using tools I had never worked with before, became a complete creative system: lifestyle photography, ingredient storytelling, PDP-ready visuals, and short-form video, each piece informed by the same strategic thinking, each one holding its own.
What This Work Demonstrates
Brand Observation
Studied Bath & Body Works’ product photography, ingredient graphics, lifestyle imagery, and product storytelling before creating new visual concepts, that would engage new and varied target audiences.
Creative Scalability
Expanded a single product photograph into a cohesive collection of campaign assets, including lifestyle imagery, ingredient graphics, PDP-inspired layouts, social media concepts, and motion studies.
Audience Thinking
Developed multiple creative directions around distinct customer moments (from young fragrance beginners to mature customers drawn to comfort, elegance, and self-care), demonstrating how one product can speak to different audiences while remaining true to the brand.
AI Art Direction
Not every image the AI generated made the cut. Directing the output meant evaluating each result against the brand, the audience, and the campaign direction, and knowing when to push further, reframe the prompt, or start over. The technology followed. The decisions were mine.