Hampton by Hilton is known for its waffles. For April Fools, GSD&M built a campaign around the logical extension of that: waffle-scented shampoo and syrup-scented conditioner, sold with a completely straight face. Camlock Films came on as the production company, with Morgan Grisham directing and Nickolas Grisham editing. The brief was easy to state and hard to execute. Shoot a joke exactly like it is a real premium beauty campaign.

The comedy only works if nothing in the execution winks. That meant committing fully to the visual language of a shampoo ad: slow motion hair in motion, hard backlight, lens flare, the glossy close-up beauty pass. It also meant the hotel had to read five-star rather than four. Every lighting and framing decision was made to sell the product as real, so the premise could do the work on its own.

We shot the spot practically in-hotel, treating the location like a beauty set instead of a travel shoot, with controlled light built specifically for hair movement. Post ran on a compressed schedule: roughly 48 hours of editing on site at the GSD&M office, working directly alongside the agency team rather than sending cuts back and forth. The final deliverable was a 30-second spot. The voiceover, written and performed dead straight, is what pushes it over.

There are no published performance numbers on this one, so here is the honest measure: it has been on our reel since the beginning, and it is still one of our favorite shoots. Comedy that depends on production value is a specific skill, and it is the kind of thing agency creatives are usually testing for when they look at a director. For agencies in Austin and Texas looking for a production partner who can hold a straight face through a premium-looking commercial production, this is the one we point to.