Managing the Tostitos Matrix

When Vocabulary brought us the brief for the Tostitos "Tasting Window" campaign, the creative was highly ambitious. But the real hurdle wasn't the creative—it was the logistics.

We were tasked with managing a massive matrix of deliverables: highly controlled studio food photography, work-in-progress OOH mechanicals, and a multi-city experiential (XM) activation across Toronto and Vancouver featuring Chef Susur Lee.

"Nothing happened in isolation," notes Alisa Pellizzari, Executive Producer at DOCK9. "We were dealing with overlapping schedules where every moving piece had to hit exact, parallel delivery dates across different cities."

Here is how the team solved the logistical puzzle and delivered a visually flawless campaign.
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Studio vs. Streets

The job required two completely different styles of production: a highly stylized studio environment and a run-and-gun live event capture. To ensure they felt like the exact same campaign, we relied on specialized partners and a unified post-production pipeline.

We brought in a dedicated food photographer, flooding the studio with bright, commercial lighting to mimic an outdoor summer activation. For the live events and kitchen capture, we tapped a videographer specializing in high-end hospitality. To marry these two distinct shooting environments, our team oversaw the full post-production pipeline, closely managing the final retouching and colour grade so the entire campaign felt like one cohesive world.

Maximizing the Talent

Working with high-profile talent like Chef Susur Lee means dealing with razor-thin windows of availability. You don't have time to reset on the day. To maximize his time on camera, we brought in a dedicated food stylist to prep the entire kitchen beforehand. When Susur arrived, there was zero waiting—he stepped straight to the block, executed the necessary actions, and we got the shots.
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The 4:00 PM Pivot

Agile production isn't just a buzzword—it's a requirement. On the exact day our final OOH assets were supposed to ship, the client overhauled the creative at 4:00 pm.

That is a tight window on a normal day, but we were simultaneously managing crew on the ground in Toronto and Vancouver while liaising with agency partners in New York and Los Angeles. Within minutes, our team was coordinating with all of the media companies, spinning up our studio artist to revise the mechanicals, and pushing the new files out the door to meet the extended deadline.

The Final Polish

When the dust settled and the campaign went live coast-to-coast, the success of the project ultimately came down to remaining agile while relentlessly protecting the final outputs.

"What I'm most proud of is the visual consistency," says Alisa. "Whether you were looking at a massive digital billboard, a social asset, or standing in front of the physical tasting window, the branding and execution were perfectly aligned."

It takes a heavy-hitting team and a seasoned agency producer to pull off a matrix like this without letting a single detail slip. Protecting the creative vision while absorbing the logistical headaches is exactly why we built DOCK9.

See the complete campaign rollout on the Tostitos - Tasting Window work page.