Studio Default is a creative studio. We make campaign creative, UGC and ad creative for direct-to-consumer and ecommerce brands running paid social. The studio was founded in December 2025 in Johannesburg and works with brands remotely, anywhere.
The work is produced with AI. We say that on the homepage and we say it here. What a brand is buying is the direction in front of it: eight years of professional photography deciding the light, the casting, the crop and the grade before anything is generated.
The problem brands arrive with
Most brands that come to us have already tried both of the available options. A self-serve AI tool gave them flat, generic output that looked like every other AI ad in the feed. A photoshoot gave them good work, one look, and a bill that made it hard to repeat more than twice a year. Neither keeps up with paid social, where creative fatigues in weeks while CPMs climb the whole time.
What these brands need is a constant supply of fresh, on-brand creative. That is the thing we sell.
How the work runs
Direction first. Production second.
Before a single asset is generated, we set the rules for the brand's world: one colour grade, one light logic, one casting, and a defined list of what is never allowed in frame. Those decisions are the deliverable. The render is the last step.
A project runs in four stages over 3 to 5 days. Discovery, one day. Direction, one day. Production, two days. Delivery, one day. No shoot to schedule, no location to travel to, no reshoot when the light changes.
What a month contains
A month of production built for a media buyer looks like this:
- Clean product shots for the catalogue and the retargeting set
- Lifestyle frames, product in a world rather than on a background
- UGC-style concepts, the format that still outperforms polished creative on cold traffic
- Static ad layouts run through formats that convert: before and after, review grid, stat panel, versus, receipt
- Offer and promo variations, the same layout rebuilt around a discount or a bundle
- Copy variations per layout, because half of what you test is the line, not the picture
That spread covers a homepage, a paid social set, an email and a lookbook without repeating an asset. A single shoot day cannot produce it at any budget.
The standard
Volume on its own is noise that costs money to serve. Every asset has to survive being placed next to the brand's own site, its packaging, and whatever its competitors are running.
That means a consistent grade across every frame, the same casting throughout, one light logic, and products that look like the actual product rather than a plausible cousin of it. Your packaging, your label, your proportions, locked into the generation.
Disclosure
We state on every client-facing surface that the work is AI-produced. Product demonstration, application and unboxing content in a creator style is honest when it is labelled as brand-produced content rather than a genuine customer testimonial. We keep claims to what a brand can substantiate. That is a copy discipline, and copy is where ad accounts actually get into trouble.
What it costs
Monthly plans start at R5,000 for a single product, and Core, the first retainer, is R8,500. A once-off project is R4,500, and larger plans run to R24,000 or more, depending on scope. Prices are stated here because a brand deciding what to buy next quarter should be able to do the maths without booking a call.
If that is the position you are in, the useful question is how many concepts you can get in front of an audience between now and then. We are built to make that number larger.