Joy in the Sephora Bag

The gift begins with the bag

The campaign began with a familiar pressure: finding a gift that feels personal and will get the right reaction. The Sephora bag offered a simple way into that problem. Its stripes are recognisable before anyone sees what is inside.

“Joy in the Sephora Bag” made that anticipation the centre of the campaign. The bag became a recurring object that could move between people, products and places, carrying the same idea through the holiday season.

Design detail

Keeping the brand recognisable

The visual direction explored iridescent stripes, a festive red ribbon and dimensional icons drawn from beauty and gifting. The challenge was to give the system a new festive character while keeping the stripes, logo and proportions recognisably Sephora.

I executed the bag development shown here. The material studies tested how light and colour could bring movement to a familiar object. Across the wider toolkit, glossy icons and soft pearlescent environments gave products and packaging a shared setting.

One idea across a full season

The campaign plan moved through launch, 11.11, Black Friday, peak gifting and the period after Christmas. Each moment gave joy a different expression: discovery, anticipation, value, giving and self gifting.

That required a visual system with room to adapt. We developed the bag idea across films, social formats, retail artwork and OOH. My train wrap and street placement mockups helped show how it could work at a very different scale from a phone screen.

The people behind the gifting

The film direction used different beauty personalities and their reactions to receiving the bag. Passing it between frames connected those performances, with product reveals and the striped graphic language holding the edit together.

On the shoot, I helped arrange what was needed and get the planned shots done. The behind the scenes footage shows the practical work behind those moments: styling, performance, bag handling and the sets used for the campaign imagery.

From campaign film to social behaviour

Social ideas gave the same object new uses. A view from inside the bag changes the viewer’s position. Passing the bag creates an exchange between people. Manifestation and product discovery formats connect the campaign to familiar social gestures.

The bag’s stripes and shape keep the films, social ideas and OOH concepts connected, even as their scale and point of view change.