Shooting a product that hasn’t launched yet

1 · The confidentiality agreement, before the brief

The natural order is to sign it before anything is shown: images, samples, dates or names.

In practice it tends to happen the other way around, because the client shows the product in order to ask for a quote. So the agreement can be signed at first contact, before any detail. If your company has its own template, we work with yours; if not, we provide one.

And if the project doesn’t go ahead, the commitment still stands: what was shown for a quote isn’t discussed and isn’t kept.

2 · Who sees the images inside the studio

Worth deciding explicitly, because the answer isn’t always “one person”.

On a simple session the material is seen by whoever shoots and whoever retouches. On a production with a model, styling or video, it passes through more hands. What changes from project to project isn’t whether there’s a crew, but how many people are in it.

What is fixed: everyone involved is covered by the same commitment as the studio, including people who aren’t staff. If you’d rather a particular part were handled by one person only, it can be organised that way — worth saying at booking.

3 · Where the files live and who can get in

Images of an unreleased product don’t travel through open channels.

It’s worth agreeing how previews are sent, who on your team gets access, and whether that access is shared internally. The weak point is almost never the studio: it’s the internal forward, the team chat, the deck someone uploads to a shared folder.

Delivery and file-retention conditions are on the pricing page. If your company needs something different — a specific channel, early deletion — it’s agreed in writing.

4 · What can be shown during the session, and what can’t

Backstage is the easiest gap to close and the one most often forgotten.

A story on social, a photo of the set sent to a friend, the product reflected in a studio mirror: none of it feels like a leak while it’s happening. Which is why the rule gets set beforehand, not during.

By default, an unreleased product appears in none of the studio’s posts, not even partially, until you say otherwise. If you’d also rather there were no process photos at all, say so and the session runs without them.

5 · When the studio can show the work

This is the part worth closing with a date rather than an intention.

The usual answer is simple: the studio publishes after the launch. But “after the launch” can mean release day, the end of the campaign, or never — and all three are legitimate.

The variants we normally use:

• free to publish from the launch date;
• publication from a specific date you set;
• only certain images published, not the series;
• no publication at all; the work stays in the archive.

Picking one at the start avoids the awkward conversation exactly when your campaign is running.

6 · What happens to samples and prototypes

A product that doesn’t exist in shops yet usually arrives as a single sample, sometimes without its final packaging or with provisional labels.

Two things are worth agreeing: how it’s returned, and whether anything should be destroyed. Some brands ask that pre-production labels don’t come back and that any provisional printed material is destroyed at the studio. That gets done, and confirmed in writing once it is.

7 · What goes in writing

A confidentiality agreement is a document, but the operational decisions live in the project.

So what’s agreed sits in the same place as the rest of the job: delivery channel, who gets access, the date from which publication is allowed, what comes back and what gets destroyed. It doesn’t need a separate document for each item; it needs to be written somewhere both sides can return to.