Case study / Spec campaign for Levi’s

American Boy

An ode to denim, youth and the moments in between.

Watch the Levi’s spec film: a woman in a denim shirt stands between two men in cowboy hats and denim outside a barn

Type: Spec campaign, self-initiated
Deliverables: 56-second film, editorial photography
Our role: Concept, direction, production, edit
Year: 2026

The challenge

Most denim advertising defaults to the same thing: a product, on a body, in a studio. It shows what the clothes look like and almost nothing about why you’d want to wear them.

The question we set ourselves: can denim be sold through an engaging lifestyle story instead of a conventional product ad, and does that make it more desirable rather than less?

The concept

Americana, found in the English countryside. Cowboy hats, open fields and an old barn, following two characters and the moments between them. Levi’s heritage is built on the American West; we wanted to show how that feeling travels, and what it looks like on an autumn afternoon closer to home.

No hard sell, no voiceover listing features. Just characters, a place and a mood, with the denim worn the way people actually wear it.

A man in a black cowboy hat and denim jacket looks into the distance against a cloudy sky — Character first. The jacket is just what he’s wearing.

A woman in a denim shirt laughs as she leads someone by the hand through an autumn field — Point-of-view moments put the viewer inside the day.

The execution

Creative direction. A concept and treatment built around two characters and one location, so every shot served the same story.
Casting and styling. Two leads cast to feel like a real pair, plus a supporting extra, styled head to toe in Levi’s, from light-wash vests to raw-denim jackets.
Film production. Shot in a single day on location in Hertfordshire, in natural light, with a crew of four.
Editorial photography and edit. Directed, shot and edited in-house into a 56-second film and a full set of editorial photographs.

The marketing thinking

One idea, built to travel. We planned the shoot so a single campaign could feed every channel a brand uses, from the launch film to the product page. Here’s how its assets map to where they’d run.

Asset	Where it works
Hero film (0:56)	Launch moment, YouTube, website and paid social
Cut-downs from the film (6–15 seconds)	Reels, TikTok, Stories and paid ads
Editorial portraits	Campaign imagery, carousels, print and out-of-home
Product details (501 patch, waistband)	E-commerce product pages, ads and carousels
Landscape and mood stills	Feed rhythm and Stories between product posts

The deliverables

A 56-second campaign film and a full set of editorial photographs: portraits, quiet moments, the places and the product details, all shot in the same light so the campaign holds together from a feed post to a product page. A selection is below.

▶ Watch the film

A man in a cowboy hat and denim vest and a woman in a denim shirt lean against a sunlit barn wall

A man in a cowboy hat reclines on a wooden chair outside a barn, in light-wash denim

A woman in a denim shirt looks back over her shoulder in a field of long grass

Seen from behind, a woman with windblown hair rests her arm on the shoulder of a man in a cowboy hat under a cloudy sky

Close-up of the leather 501 patch and red tab on the back of a pair of Levi’s jeans

Black-and-white photograph of two horses behind a wire fence in a field

What it shows

How we think, not just what we can film: start with one clear idea, build a world around the product, and plan the production so the campaign can live everywhere the brand does.