Two coffee commercials for Maud’s Purely Organic — how a strategy became a script, the script became boards, and the boards became two days in a family kitchen.
Most commercials start with “we need a video.” This one started four months earlier, in a workshop room, figuring out what the brand actually stands for.
Maud’s Purely Organic is a coffee brand named after two sisters. By the time we rolled camera in August, we’d already done the strategy work, written the scripts, boarded every shot and planned every hour of the shoot. This is how that came together.
Strategy Before Scripts
Before a single scene was written, we ran discovery and a brand workshop with the client. The idea that came out of it: coffee as an act of giving. In most coffee ads, the hero is the person drinking. In ours, the hero is the person handing the cup to someone else — a daughter bringing her dad his first cup, a grandmother sliding hers across the counter.
That platform led to five customer personas, 24 ad concepts and scripts for a seven-spot campaign. We scoped Phase 1 to two spots and put everything into making those two right.
The strategy decides what you shoot. Without it, you’re just making pretty footage.
The Boards
Every scene in both spots was storyboarded, then cut into rough animatics the client could watch and comment on, timecode by timecode. Those notes became the revision list: lines rewritten, beats extended, a couple of scenes replaced.
One detail the boards caught early: both spots open with the girls bringing coffee to their dad. On paper, they looked like the same scene twice. So we split them — in one spot he’s asleep in the bedroom, in the other he’s already up and working at the table. Different room, different light, different blocking. It’s a small fix on paper and an expensive one in the edit.
Scout, Then Shoot
We found the house — a family home in La Jolla — and walked it before shoot day: every room, every window, where the sun comes in and when. The scout decides the schedule. The garden had to be shot first thing, while the morning light was soft. The kitchen and bedroom could be lit.
We also planned the wardrobe around the product. Everyone on camera wore soft neutrals, so the Maud’s pack is the only bright, saturated color in the frame. Your eye goes where the color is.
Two Days in a Family Kitchen
Two units. The main unit stayed with the actors on the RED Komodo. A second unit took the garden for product shots, so both could shoot at the same time.
The biggest constraint was time with the kids. Young actors get a limited day, hair and makeup included. So the bedroom and kitchen were pre-lit before anyone arrived, and every scene with the girls was stacked into that one window. When the schedule is tight, you protect the hours that matter and build everything else around them.
What We Delivered
The shoot produced a full campaign, not just two videos:
- Two master spots
- Eight cutdowns built for specific placements — Amazon, connected TV and YouTube, and vertical social
- Eleven short story clips for social
- Product and lifestyle photography from the same days
Why It Works
None of this is complicated. It’s just done in order. Strategy first, so we know what the ad has to say. Boards second, so everyone agrees on the picture before money gets spent. A real scout, so the schedule matches the location. Then a shoot day that’s about executing, not figuring things out.
That order is the difference between a commercial and footage.
Credits
Client — Maud’s Purely Organic
Directed by Oz Riveros
A Lead Wolf production
Oz — Lead Wolf