The Drum visited the Edinburgh set with ad agency Calling to witness the filming of the French wellington boot brand’s Christmas ad and learn why they chose a poem from the 1800s to give it a modern twist.
How do you make a 100-year-old French wellington boot brand relevant to a modern audience? That was the challenge facing London agency Calling when approached by Le Chameau earlier this year. Fortunately, Calling has plenty of experience in transforming heritage brands, having successfully revitalized names such as Interflora and PG Tips.
Le Chameau, meaning ‘the camel,’ was originally designed as a boot for fishermen and outdoor workers. The product is designed to connect people to the natural world, according to Le Chameau, which claims to make the only Wellington boot made from sustainably sourced rubber.
“The brief was to crack the brand open to new kind of city dwelling, style-conscious audience,” explains Calling’s executive creative director and co-founder Josh Tenser. “They’d noticed this started to happen organically in the past year or so. David Beckham started wearing them and Dave the rapper started wearing them.”
The brand was eager to create a festive ad this year to connect with its new audience, and Tenser’s team proposed a concept that centers the film on a simple yet highly relatable tradition: the Christmas Day Walk.
“They were very much like, we know we’ve got a core audience, and we know that a new audience will enjoy us,” he explains. “What we want to do is explore the shared values between those two groups rather than to do anything drastically trendy.”
The film is set to the timeless Song Of Wandering Aengus by Irish poet WB Yeats and features two lovers who forfeit the comforting glow of their phone screens for an adventure outside, finding nature, each other and themselves again.
First published in 1897, Yeats’s poem tells the story of Aengus, who catches an enchanted fish that transforms into a beautiful young woman. She calls his name before disappearing, leaving Aengus smitten and driven to search for her endlessly. The poem explores the magic and peril of infatuation.
The narrated poem is a perfect soundtrack to the spot, capturing the brand’s history as a fisherman’s boot while evoking a spirit of exploration and the allure of folklore.
“Using those words was a distinct upgrade from my copywriting,” laughs Tenser. “I wanted it to be a romantic ad, because the brand is premium and luxury in a way, and so I wanted it to have this feeling of romance, even though it is contemporary. And I also didn’t want to completely sort of shit on Christmas, you know, it’s still Christmas. I feel like we’re allowed to have some whimsy and magic.”
The Drum was on set in Edinburgh as the ad was filmed at two key locations: Portobello Beach and the heart of the city, nestled in the historic old town. The Scottish capital proved to be the ideal backdrop for the romantic, mystical atmosphere Tenser envisioned, bringing the city’s distinctly gothic charm to life.
“Edinburgh is architecturally very premium and beautiful, and I think aspirational,” Tesner adds. “The vibe of both the city and the great outdoors is perfect. The city is really gorgeous and aesthetically very grand, and outdoors is proper outdoors.”
Maria Lax brought a distinctive approach to the shoot as director, seamlessly blending her love for color, light, and the fusion of reality with fantasy. Visually, she took a lot of cues from the poem’s vivid imagery.
“There’s a bittersweet nature in the text in how it conveys the beauty of the land, love and loss in magical, fleeting moments. The protagonist is forever seeking what he once encountered,” Lax explains. “The roaming camera was inspired by that journey, which at times is interrupted by bursts of memories.”
Director of photography Annika Summerson also chose to use vintage zooms that added texture to the shots to amplify this.
“I felt the light needed to be searching too, losing and finding our heroes,” Lax continues. “We chose the delicate warmth because, to me, the most emotionally charged, nostalgic light is the fragile softness of the very last rays of sunset. It’s the light that can break and mend your heart all at once.”
Folklore, and to some extent Celtic culture, lies at the heart of this film. It’s a shared interest between Lax and Tenser who spent countless hours discussing it during the early stages of the ad’s creation. The topic has also seen a significant resurgence recently, with platforms like TikTok buzzing with content around it.
“The whole folklore thing is really interesting because its people, I think, seeking a reconnection with nature and it’s a more human way of storytelling,” Tenser says. “By definition, folklore is verbal traditions, verbal storytelling, passed down through generations in communities.”
Le Chameau’s festive campaign marks the first time Calling has worked on a Christmas ad. “It’s a rite of passage for an agency,” Tenser continues. “We always want to make a societal-ly relevant statement that has a narrative that people care about, or touches a nerve in a good way, or uncomfortable way sometimes. And you know, for me, this Christmas ad was an opportunity to say, ‘You know what? What do we really value at Christmas?’”
Read more from our Anatomy of an Ad series.
Credits
Brand: Le Chameau
Campaign name: ‘A Christmas Walk’
Ad agency: Calling
Production company: Art Practice
Director: Maria Lax