Cherry (Tom Holland) drifts from college dropout to Army medic in Iraq—anchored only by his one true love, Emily (Ciara Bravo). But after returning from the war with PTSD, his life spirals into drugs and crime, as he struggles to find his place in the world. With the film premiering at the height of awards’ season, we needed a campaign that catapulted Tom Holland’s performance into the forefront of the critical conversation while also touting the pedigree of our filmmakers signaling another blockbuster was on the horizon. The For Your Consideration (FYC) campaign launched in parallel with the broader consumer campaign and therefore still had to do some heavy lifting in brand building and awareness building.

Cherry follows the rollercoaster journey of a young man living in Cleveland, Ohio who meets the love of his life, only to risk losing her to a series of impulsive decisions and challenging life circumstances. Based on Nico Walker’s best selling novel, this film features an inspired performance by Tom Holland in the lead actor role. The film touches issues such as the brutality of war, PTSD, drug addiction, and grand larceny. Our FYC campaign and branding for the film aimed to emphasize Holland’s unique character development, in this life odyssey, while also giving the film a strong, gritty, graphic identity. Branding each chapter of the protagonist’s journey with a single bold word, we created five unique character posters to illustrate Holland’s dynamic performance.

To develop our FYC campaign we manipulated specific film stills from each stage of Tom Holland’s performance to showcase his character arc. Drawing inspiration from street art vernacular, as well as contemporary fine art, we pushed our photography to its basic high contrast form, black and white with a “cherry red” overlay. Adding to the bold masculine title treatment, industrial sans serif typography with a bit of distressed texture, we chose a neo-classical serif typeface for awards messaging as a wink to the film’s score: a mix of rock and roll and opera.

The character posters were eye catching and sparked mass social conversation lighting up fans of Tom Holland and the Russo Brothers (directors of the feature film) across Twitter and Instagram. The posters also did an amazing job of revealing the complex story that audiences would be introduced to in the film. By highlighting the various stages of Cherry’s lifecycle, we set the film up as an epic odyssey told over time. The successful launch pushed us to use these posters further into the broader campaign closer to the premiere.