Superjelly – Levitating E-commerce

The Challenge:

When Premium Packaging Creates Technical Problems

Superjelly built a sports nutrition brand around an unusual promise: workout supplements that taste like dessert and photograph like art. Their protein powders arrive in flavors such as Taro Milk Tea and London Fog, packaged in glossy tubs designed to stand out on a shelf or screen. The creative risk worked. Customers responded to the flavor innovation and the vibrant visual identity. But when the team prepared to expand distribution and scale digital advertising, a technical problem surfaced.

The glossy labels that gave the brand its premium look created bright reflections under standard studio lighting, obscuring ingredient claims and nutrition facts in product shots. Thumbnails became unreadable on mobile screens. Amazon marketplace images failed platform compliance checks because glare washed out pack text. Social media ads tested below benchmark click-through rates because the levitating product compositions that differentiated Superjelly looked cluttered or unbalanced when the rigging was not retouched cleanly.

The brand needed clean label supplement product photography that preserved the playful, floating aesthetic while meeting the technical standards required for conversion-focused e-commerce and paid media.

The Strategic Dilemma

Marketing leadership understood the trade-off. Plain white background shots would meet Amazon specifications and improve legibility, but that approach would sacrifice the color and energy that made Superjelly scroll-stopping in the first place. Generic product photography would not communicate the flavor story or justify the premium price point. The team needed a solution that combined Amazon-ready white background supplement photos with the brand's signature levitation motif. Images that worked across channels without requiring separate shoots for marketplace listings, paid social, and lifestyle content.

The challenge extended across the product catalog. Superjelly manages multiple SKU lines: whey isolate, vegan protein, pre-workout. Each available in a rotating palette of flavors. Without color consistent supplement SKU photography, the grid of products on their e-commerce site looked disjointed, undermining the cohesive brand system they had invested in building. Inconsistent backgrounds and lighting made it difficult for customers to compare flavors or recognize the brand at a glance.

The marketing team tracked higher bounce rates on product detail pages and lower add-to-cart conversions compared to industry benchmarks. They traced part of the problem to image quality. Shoppers could not read claims, could not see texture, and could not trust that the vibrant colors on screen matched the product they would receive.

The Execution:

Lighting and Color Management as Competitive Advantage

The solution required a disciplined approach to lighting, composition, and color management. One that addressed each technical problem without diluting the brand's creative identity. For glossy label glare reduction photography, the shoot used broad, diffused light sources positioned at controlled angles to eliminate specular reflections while preserving the saturated colors Superjelly's design team had specified. Polarizing filters reduced hotspots on curved surfaces. In post-production, selective dodging and burning removed residual glare without flattening the label or shifting hue.

The result was readable typography at every resolution, from desktop hero images down to mobile thumbnails in paid search ads. Claims such as "23g Protein" and "No Added Sugar" became legible, supporting the clean-label positioning and reducing friction at the point of conversion. For Amazon and other marketplace channels, the photography delivered pure white isolation with centered pack orientation, accurate color reproduction, and clean edge extractions that passed automated compliance checks on the first upload. These images met platform specifications while maintaining the brand's signature look. A detail that mattered when leadership reviewed creative assets and compared them to competitor listings.

Levitation as Strategic Signal

The levitation technique became the visual shorthand for Superjelly's innovative positioning, but executing it required more than suspending a product on fishing line. Floating supplement product photography works only when the final image feels effortless and the rigging is invisible. Each tub was positioned at a controlled height and angle, lit to match the directional quality of the background, then retouched to remove supports without leaving halos or color shifts.

The levitation was not a gimmick. It served a strategic purpose. By lifting the product off the surface, the composition directed attention to the label and created negative space that kept the frame uncluttered even when paired with bold, saturated backgrounds. The technique scaled across applications: white-ground versions for marketplace compliance, flavor-forward color-matched supplement images for campaign landing pages, and high-contrast crops for social media stories. Each variant maintained the same lighting direction, shadow density, and perspective so the brand identity remained consistent regardless of where the image appeared.

Color Consistency Across the Catalog

Color consistency presented a separate challenge. Superjelly's product line includes flavors with specific brand colors. Matcha Latte in soft green, Mango Coconut in warm orange, Ramune OG in electric blue. The photography needed to preserve those associations while adapting to different background treatments. A disciplined color-management pipeline ensured that each SKU photographed under identical conditions: calibrated white balance, repeatable exposure settings, and flavor-keyed backgrounds matched to the brand palette using spectrophotometer readings.

This rigor meant that when a customer scrolled through the flavor grid on the website, every tub looked like part of the same family. The consistency was not only aesthetic. It reduced customer service inquiries about product appearance and lowered return rates driven by mismatched expectations. For the marketing team, it simplified asset management. New flavors could be added to the grid without re-shooting the entire catalog, because the lighting and retouching standards were documented and repeatable.

The Results:

Photography That Justifies Premium Pricing

The photography also addressed a subtler business need: proving that premium pricing was justified. Superjelly positions itself at the higher end of the direct-to-consumer supplement market, charging roughly 45 USD for a pre-workout tub that competitors sell for less. The brand justifies that premium through ingredient transparency, third-party testing, and flavor innovation. The images needed to communicate all three.

Macro detail shots captured the fine texture of the powder and the precision of the label printing. Clean, even lighting revealed the quality of the packaging materials. The levitation compositions suggested care and craftsmanship. Products worth displaying, not just consuming. When leadership reviewed A/B tests comparing the new photography against older generic shots, the data supported the creative direction. Pages featuring the new images showed measurably higher engagement time, lower bounce rates, and improved add-to-cart conversion. Paid social ads using the levitating hero shots delivered click-through rates above category benchmarks, validating the decision to invest in a distinctive visual approach rather than defaulting to commodity white-ground product photography.

A Complete Asset System for Multi-Channel Growth

Superjelly received a complete asset library organized by use case. Marketplace-compliant white-ground images for Amazon and retail partners. Flavor-forward hero shots with color-matched backgrounds for email campaigns and paid media. High-resolution detail crops showing label claims and powder texture for product detail pages. Lifestyle-adjacent compositions that incorporated negative space for overlaying text or animated elements in video ads. Every file was delivered with embedded color profiles and metadata tags that allowed the marketing team to locate the right asset quickly as they scaled campaigns across channels.

The photography solved the immediate technical problems: glare, compliance, color consistency. All while preserving the brand differentiation that had driven early growth. For a direct-to-consumer brand competing in a crowded category, that combination of rigor and creativity made the difference between imagery that simply documents a product and imagery that builds a premium brand.

The Takeaway:

Product Photography as Brand Infrastructure

The Superjelly project demonstrates how clean label supplement product photography functions as infrastructure, not decoration. When a brand's positioning depends on flavor innovation and ingredient transparency, the images must prove those claims at every touchpoint. On a mobile screen in a paid ad, in an Amazon search result, on a product detail page where a customer decides whether to trust a premium price. Technical discipline creates the foundation: controlled lighting, color management, compliance with marketplace standards. Creative differentiation builds the brand: levitation, flavor-keyed palettes, compositions that feel energetic without clutter. Both are necessary.

Brands that treat photography as a checklist item get functional images that convert poorly. Brands that prioritize aesthetics without technical rigor get beautiful images that do not scale. The solution lies in understanding that product photography is a system. Repeatable lighting setups, documented color standards, and modular compositions that adapt to multiple channels while maintaining a cohesive identity. For marketing teams managing multi-SKU catalogs and multi-channel campaigns, that system becomes the engine that supports both launch velocity and long-term brand equity.

If your supplement brand needs imagery that meets marketplace compliance standards, communicates clean-label credibility, and differentiates you in a competitive category, the process begins with a conversation about how your products photograph today and what business outcomes better images would unlock.