From: American Eagle Outfitters
Subject Line: Get Gifted with Great Gifts under $30
Date: Wednesday, December 13, 2006

While it's a challenge we face all year long, avoiding the dreaded "garage sale" mish-mash of product photography becomes particularly difficult during holiday, when strategy calls for random groupings of product to be featured together under various promotional umbrellas such as "free shipping" or, in this case, "under $30". But American Eagle Outfitters has done something extremely intelligent in order to avoid that. They've photographed all of their giftable product in a super-holiday environment, which, rather than playing up the "garage sale" factor effectively neutralizes it. Think about the amount of work and hassle this saves: creative no longer needs to fake backgrounds to make products shot in different environments look as though they were shot at the same location; business and creative don't have to argue about what products can be tastefully featured in tandem. This is total genius! Let it inspire us all to do better photo planning for Holiday 2007. Let's photograph absolutely everything in front of a Christmas tree, then rest just a little easier for the the rest of the holiday season. High five, AE!

P.S. AE, if you actually did a great job of PhotoShopping these products onto this background, think of how much easier it would have been if you'd photographed them all this way in the first place!