A Client Didn’t Show Up… So We Created a Brand Campaign Instead 🤣

Well…this was absolutely not the plan.

On Saturday, we were meant to meet a client at the studio for an editing sit-down. I had already asked our video editor to come over, everyone had made time for it (on a weekend 👀) —and then the client did not show up.

Gaaahhh. 😬

Aside from the inconvenience, I was honestly a little embarrassed. I do not like feeling that someone’s time has been wasted, especially when they have come over specifically for something I arranged.

Once it became clear that the client was not coming, I thought: why don’t we make use of the time and create something for MYLITTLEWHITESPACE instead?

It seemed like a perfectly sensible rescue plan. We already had our creative person there, I had been needing new content for the upcoming botanical collection launch, and I was willing to pay for the shoot. Why let the whole day disappear?

So naturally, we drove to Abu Dhabi with almost no plan whatsoever. 🤣

The neighborhood beach I already love always surprises me with its landscape.. For this shoot - it turned out exactly what we needed in the end..

A perfect mix of a perfect mix of greenery, desert and the beach - what else can we ask for!

The first attempt…which also did not go according to plan 🙈

There is a beach just beyond my side of Dubai, towards Abu Dhabi, that I remembered as quiet, beautiful and almost untouched. We had been there before, close to one of the resorts, and in my head it was the perfect setting: sea, sand and nature—everything that visually belongs to the world of our botanicals.

Except we arrived and the beaches were closed. All of them. 🤦‍♀️ (And don’t get me into the story of how the whole area was a military site 😶)

We had driven all that way without proper props, without a script and without a particularly developed concept, only to discover that we could not actually shoot where we intended.

I was disappointed, of course. But if I am being honest, perhaps I was not completely ready either. The idea had come out of nowhere and I was trying to turn a client no-show into a finished campaign in the space of an afternoon. Ambitious? Yes. Properly planned? Absolutely not. 😅

By the time we returned home, we could have simply decided it was not meant to happen. Instead, we looked at each other and said, “Why don’t we just do it tomorrow?”

☘️ Fine. We try again tomorrow.

That evening, the idea began to take shape.

I bought flowers to add softness and texture. I gathered my baskets, linens and gardening scissors.

I bought lemons and oranges because dried orange peel is part of our botanical line, and because citrus brings that fresh, natural scent that immediately makes everything feel alive. We included rosemary and aloe, and began imagining the basket not merely as a prop, but as a small botanical world.

The Campaign Concept (taking shape as we go)

The shoot became a story of gathering: noticing what grows around us, selecting with care, bringing nature into our hands and eventually turning that inspiration into a ritual.

To be clear, we were not literally foraging unidentified wild plants to put inside our products. The tiny berries and surrounding greenery became part of the visual story—the curiosity and observation that come before making. Our actual formulations use ingredients that are deliberately selected and sourced.

But visually, the idea finally made sense.

The striped apron represented the maker: the person gathering, testing, preparing and working with her hands.

The softer white dress represented the ritual: the woman who eventually receives that care.

And in my case, I suppose I am both.

A 4 a.m. alarm for a sunrise that never really appeared 😦

The next morning—which was this morning—we woke up at 4 a.m. so we could reach the beach before sunrise.

Sunrise was around 5:30 or 5:45, and we wanted that soft golden light before the Dubai heat properly introduced itself. Even that early, it was already around 32 degrees.

Then, while we were driving, we realised we could barely see ahead. I still do not know whether to call it fog, humidity or the sky simply refusing to cooperate with our plans—but the clear sunrise we imagined was completely missing.

At that point I had to laugh. A client no-show, a closed beach, a 4 a.m. wake-up…and now the sunrise did not show up either? 🤣

But we were already there. We had the flowers. We had the basket. We had the clothes, the products and the people who had made the effort to come.

So we created with the morning we were given.

And strangely enough, the haze gave the photographs something we could not have planned. The horizon almost disappeared. The sand, sea and sky softened into one another. The white dress moved through it all as though the whole scene was somewhere between the desert and the water.

What felt like one more thing going wrong became part of what made the images beautiful.

Why we still create our own brand content?

This unexpected shoot also reminded me why original content remains important to us.

We do use AI. It can help us explore an idea, extend an existing editorial or imagine a setting that would otherwise be difficult to create. I am curious about it, and I do not believe technology and human creativity have to be enemies.

In my perfect world, I would love to see wooden timber fences aged by time.. it comes with stories and a once a nature now blended in architecture…

But when an image represents our actual products and the heart of MYLITTLEWHITESPACE, I still want there to be a real story underneath it. It will always be in our brand DNA.

A real person using and testing what we make.

Real hands arranging the botanicals.

A real UAE landscape—even when the weather refuses to behave.

And real creatives who contribute their time, eye and interpretation to bring an idea to life.

For me, caring for people also means valuing the people whose work helps shape the brand. A beautiful campaign is never created by one person alone. Someone films. Someone edits. Someone watches the light, catches the movement, carries the basket, remembers the missing detail or says, “Let’s try that again.”

AI may help us extend the story, but I would still like the original story to belong to us.

Perhaps the day was not wasted after all 🥹

It is funny to think that none of this would have happened if yesterday’s client had arrived as planned.

I began that day embarrassed because I believed someone’s time had been wasted. We drove to Abu Dhabi for nothing. We returned without the content we intended to make. Even the next morning did not give us the sunrise we woke up for.

And yet, somewhere inside all those inconveniences, a complete little brand story appeared.

Not because everything aligned perfectly, but because we kept asking: what else can we make from what is already here?

Perhaps that is part of building a brand too. You plan, something fails, you adapt, something else fails…and then every now and then, the thing you did not plan becomes more meaningful than the original idea. ☺️

So no, I suppose the day was not wasted after all. (Also, look out for the second part - one with the products that’s to be launched!)

It was only waiting for us to decide what else it could become.