Memorieslab Treasure Today Turns Photo Printing Into Visual Poetry
Memorieslab's "Treasure Today" is a monochrome digital brand film released in France in October 2015, created by Paris agency Kids Love Jetlag and directed by Mathieu César, positioning the boutique online photo lab as a guardian of emotional memory through high-quality printed photography.
Memorieslab is a premium, experimental online photo lab founded in 2013 by twins Andy Shi and Raymond Shi. The brand occupies an intentionally narrow position in the professional services and media landscape: it functions simultaneously as a high-end photo lab and a conceptual online gallery, treating the printed photograph not as a commodity product but as a permanent vessel for lived experience. "Treasure Today" was conceived as the brand's first-ever brand movie, and it remains the only Memorieslab advertising campaign identified in publicly indexed advertising records, according to Clapboard's archive. The campaign carries a Clapboard Score of 70 out of 100.
In France, the campaign launched in October 2015 as a single digital media asset — one film, no accompanying print or out-of-home executions. That restraint is itself a creative statement: a brand dedicated to the singular, irreplaceable object chose to introduce itself through a singular, irreplaceable piece of film. The objective was brand identity, not direct response. Rather than demonstrating product features or price advantages, "Treasure Today" set out to establish an emotional and philosophical framework for why physical prints matter in an age defined by ephemeral digital imagery. The campaign's geographic launch market was France, where Memorieslab was headquartered, though the film's language is English and its creative ambition is clearly international in scope. Kids Love Jetlag, a Paris and Shanghai agency operating within the FF Group, served as the creative agency of record for the campaign, with Iconoclast as production company and Arnaud Potier credited for cinematography, as reported by Shots.
Memorieslab targeted a consumer who experiences photography as an art form and an act of preservation, not merely a convenience. That positioning is specific and deliberate. The brand's strategic rationale rests on a clear insight: as smartphone cameras made image capture frictionless and near-universal, the resulting surplus of digital photographs paradoxically diminished the perceived value of any individual image. Memorieslab's argument, embedded in "Treasure Today," is that the printed photograph restores singularity and permanence to a moment that might otherwise dissolve into an undifferentiated archive.
The online photo-printing market in which Memorieslab competed was fragmented and growing. The global online photo-printing market was estimated at a substantial scale by 2025, with a projected compound annual growth rate of around seven and a half percent through 2034, according to Dataintelo. In France in 2015, the competitive landscape included established consumer-facing platforms such as Cheerz, a French photo-printing service that had gained wide retail distribution, and international players such as Photobox, which held significant market presence across Europe. Against these volume-driven competitors, Memorieslab's strategy was deliberate differentiation: it did not compete on price, speed, or convenience. It competed on meaning.
Kids Love Jetlag, as reported by Shots, framed the film as a manifesto rather than a product demonstration. CB News, writing in October 2015, described the work as a nostalgic manifesto and a visual poem — language that reflects the campaign's ambition to operate at the level of cultural statement rather than category advertising. This narrative approach aligns with professional photography communities and design-literate consumers in France and beyond who regard the physical print as an artefact rather than a souvenir. The strategic risk of such an approach is real: a purely philosophical brand film generates awareness only if its aesthetic quality is sufficient to earn attention organically. The film's subsequent award recognition suggests that the creative execution met that threshold.
Mathieu César directed "Treasure Today" for Memorieslab. The film was produced by Iconoclast, with cinematography by Arnaud Potier, as reported by Shots. The creative brief, as described in publicly available campaign documentation, called for a visual poem full of symbolism — an ode to monochrome that would serve as a manifesto for the brand's belief in the preservation of emotional moments through physical prints.
The choice of monochrome is not incidental. Black-and-white photography carries a cultural weight that colour imagery cannot replicate: it strips a scene of its temporal specificity, lending it an air of permanence and timelessness that is exactly the quality Memorieslab sought to associate with its printed products. César and Potier executed this concept across locations that include Iceland, a landscape whose scale and austerity amplify the film's contemplative register, as reported by Shots. The film's visual language draws on wide-open natural environments to suggest both the vastness of human experience and the smallness — and therefore preciousness — of the individual moment.
Shots, writing on October 21, 2015, described the film as an epic black-and-white spot about everyday moments and noted a reference to the DeLorean from the film Back to the Future — a knowing nod to the idea of travelling back in time to recover what has been lost. That detail is emblematic of the campaign's approach: literary and cinematic in its references, emotionally intelligent in its construction, and resistant to the conventions of category advertising. The film runs as a pure narrative piece, without voiceover explanation or product demonstration. Production credits for the broader creative development sit with Kids Love Jetlag, the Paris and Shanghai agency whose founders have documented experience building brand identities for premium and lifestyle clients, as noted by Clapboard's archive. The result is a single sixty-second-or-so brand artefact that earns its category — Media and Entertainment, Professional Services — through the quality of its craft rather than the volume of its messaging.
"Treasure Today" earned a Bronze Lion in the Best Film Craft category for Cinematography at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2016, as reported by Clapboard's award listings. That recognition is externally verifiable and places the campaign in a small cohort of work from France that achieved international creative distinction in its year of eligibility. For a first brand film from a boutique photo lab operating without the marketing infrastructure of a large consumer brand, a Cannes Lions award in a craft category represents a meaningful and structurally significant outcome.
No verified campaign-spend data or media-reach figures for "Treasure Today" are publicly available. Archive engagement recorded by Clapboard shows the film accumulated 11,729 views and 100 likes, with one comment logged. For a single-asset digital campaign with no reported paid media amplification, that volume of engagement reflects the film's reliance on earned distribution — industry press coverage from publications including Shots and CB News, and word-of-mouth within the professional photography and advertising communities in France and internationally. The organic character of that reach is consistent with the brand's positioning: a company that prizes the considered and the permanent over the mass-produced and disposable would logically favour a campaign that earns its audience rather than purchasing one.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness lies in its coherence. The creative form — a single, beautifully crafted monochrome film — enacts the brand promise of Memorieslab rather than merely describing it. A Clapboard Score of 70 out of 100 reflects that creative integrity while acknowledging the campaign's limited measurable commercial footprint as a one-asset, single-market launch execution.
Treasure Today is Memorieslab's first brand film, released in France in October 2015. Created by Kids Love Jetlag and directed by Mathieu César, the monochrome digital film positions Memorieslab as a premium online photo lab that preserves emotional memory through high-quality printed photography. It is the brand's only publicly documented advertising campaign.
Mathieu César directed Treasure Today for Memorieslab. The film was produced by Iconoclast, with cinematography by Arnaud Potier, as reported by Shots. Kids Love Jetlag, a Paris and Shanghai agency within the FF Group, served as the creative agency. Part of the film was shot on location in Iceland.
Treasure Today won a Bronze Lion at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2016, in the Best Film Craft category for Cinematography, as reported by Clapboard's award listings. This recognition placed the campaign among a small group of French digital campaigns to achieve international creative distinction that year.
Memorieslab used a narrative visual poem in monochrome to argue that physical prints restore permanence to ephemeral digital images. Rather than demonstrating product features, the campaign established an emotional framework — positioning Memorieslab above volume competitors such as Cheerz and Photobox through aesthetic and philosophical differentiation rather than price or convenience.
Memorieslab was founded in 2013 by twins Andy Shi and Raymond Shi, according to Clapboard's archive. The brand operates as both a high-end online photo lab and a conceptual online gallery. Treasure Today, released in October 2015, was the brand's first advertising campaign and remains its only publicly indexed creative work.
Treasure Today is archived on Clapboard, where it carries a Clapboard Score of 70 out of 100. The archive records 11,729 views and 100 likes for the film. It is catalogued under the Media and Entertainment and Professional Services categories, with a 2015 France launch date and Kids Love Jetlag as the credited agency.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
