(01 / ford_media_lab) 2016 to 2026
we created fascination.
Ford Media Lab, 2016 to 2026. Ten years of strategy, creative direction and production for more than forty spirits, wine and luxury brands. This is the record.
move to stir the field // click to take an exposuredrag to stir the field // tap to take an exposure
(02 / the archive)
Selected work.
Commissioned campaigns, publications and programs, 2016 to 2026. Each lab_report documents the brief, the approach and the result.
(03 / thesis)
Innovation became the baseline. Fascination stayed the outlier.
Fifteen seconds of attention is the scarcest thing in a feed. Everything we made was built to earn it.
Ford Media Lab was a strategy and production studio for spirits, wine and luxury brands, opened in Brooklyn in 2016 and closed to new work in 2026. Strategy came first from the first day. The output moved from photography and copy to stories built beyond the social grid, and finished as a hybrid studio, real capture and AI production in one loop. Over $5 million of work for more than forty brands, mostly by two people.
We came up through the trade. Bartending in San Francisco and New York, then inside the houses: Rachel as Tanqueray’s national brand ambassador for Diageo, Kyle helping build Collectif 1806 at Rémy Cointreau. We trained bartenders, ran advocacy programs and signed off on agency work from the brand side. Every handoff we sat through is one we designed out of the lab.
We learned brand building in spirits, where every post is age-gated, every bottle is glass, and every sale runs through a bartender first. The method traveled: understand the audience, find the human story, set a clear creative direction, and carry it across formats and channels.
(04 / the decade)
Ten years, one at a time.
Every year of the lab, from the first ninety photographs to the last hybrid frame.
[2016]
// first_frame
Kyle and Rachel left their jobs together, and Ford Media Lab opened on September 1 in a Williamsburg apartment.
[2017]
// first_retainer
Plymouth Gin hired the lab to run its US social, the lab’s first big retainer and its first account at Pernod Ricard.
[2018]
// spirited_finalist
Volume 1 was a Top 4 finalist for Best Cocktail and Spirits Publication at the Spirited Awards.
[2019]
// pencil_factory
In February the lab took Suite 402 in Greenpoint’s Pencil Factory, a former rug closet painted black, with a wall by Katie Merz.
[2020]
// peak_year
Suite 501 opened in February with a view of the East River, weeks before nobody could be in a room.
[2021]
// full_calendar
1800 Tequila kept the studio shooting all year, from a Jarritos collaboration for National Tequila Day to a Las Vegas Raiders partnership, and Maria Tash, a fine-jewelry house, found the lab through its stop motion.
[2022]
// sonoma_trip
The lab went to Sonoma and came back with enough Kenwood material to carry the account for years.
[2023]
// gulf_coast
In July the lab moved its studio to Clearwater, and in December Perrier-Jouët flew down to shoot there, on custom walls and surfaces hand built in the studio for the shoot.
[2024]
// hybrid_begins
Mount Gay, the lab’s first client, came back for two shoots, and a longtime client from Rémy Cointreau brought the lab to Cincoro.
[2025]
// wynwood
Early in the year the lab went all in on AI production, and in July it moved to Wynwood.
[2026]
// the_record
The lab built Devil’s Grin’s Visual World and turned ten on September 1.
(05 / the trade)
The brand side of the table.
Bartenders, baristas, sommeliers, the person behind the counter. Every premium product gets recommended before it gets bought.
Before the lab, we were the people agencies pitched. Rachel spent four years as Tanqueray’s national brand ambassador for Diageo, running Green Room events for the trade across the country. Kyle helped build Collectif 1806, Rémy Cointreau’s bartender ambassador program, and finished as its manager. Before that, years behind the bar in San Francisco and New York. Nobody had to explain the three-tier system to us, or why a bartender won’t post your drink, so a client’s brief could be one page.
(06 / the houses)
Clients followed us.
Diageo
Pernod Ricard
Suntory Global Spirits
Rémy Cointreau
Proximo
Rémy Cointreau to Cincoro to Roué. Tanqueray to Plymouth Gin to Wolves Whiskey. Forty-plus brands, five houses and over $5 million of work in ten years, mostly two people.
(07 / the log)
Every experiment starts as noise.
Prototype campaigns for categories that hadn’t asked yet, made without a client. Two shipped in 2026. Four were left latent when the lab closed to new work.
(latent // exp_003 // fragrance)
eleventh floor
Can a fragrance campaign hold a viewer with no face, no name and no note list?
status // left_latent
(08 / the writing)
What we thought.
(09 / the founders)
Kyle Ford
co_founder // creative_director // 2016 to 2026
Led creative direction and production standards, from the first concept to the final frame, and stayed behind the camera and in the composite for all ten years.
Rachel Ford
co_founder // managing_partner // 2016 to 2026
Led strategy, editorial and integrated programs, connecting the brief, the people and the channels from first conversation through delivery.
We met at a karate studio in Sacramento, long before either of us had tended a bar. We’ve been in the same room ever since.
(10 / conscious_compute)
AI production runs on real compute. Each month the lab estimated its usage and made contributions to Climeworks, the Bonneville Environmental Foundation and the Earth Species Project. Conscious Compute was a self-directed effort to support carbon removal, water restoration and biodiversity. The estimates guided that support; they did not establish a net-positive footprint for each asset.
(11 / last_exposure)