The Zapper Ice Pro marked Meridian's first move beyond trimming and into IPL, a category defined by clinical imagery, sterile product shots, and messaging aimed at an older, spa-going consumer. With a younger audience increasingly curious about longer-lasting hair removal but put off by the category's medical tone, the opportunity was clear: make IPL feel as approachable and self-expressive as the rest of the Meridian lineup, and give Gen Z a reason to pick one up.

The answer started with the product itself. The Zapper's soft, rounded form and candy-bright color palette echoed the Y2K "blobject" design era (the new VW Beetle, iMacs, Tamagotchis, etc.), so the team built a retro-futurist art direction that leaned into it, pairing glossy, bubble-soft shapes, chrome-and-pastel palettes, and optimistic tech-nostalgia with Meridian's playful voice. The result positioned IPL not as a clinical procedure but as a cool piece of personal tech, driving adoption among a demographic the category had largely ignored.

Launching with a very small production budget, the creative team developed a hybrid practical-AI production model to deliver the scale the launch required. Practical shoots captured hero product, in-use, and talent content, while a generative AI pipeline extended that footage into environments, motion, and variations that would have been cost-prohibitive to shoot. The workflow produced a launch library of more than 100 assets across ecommerce, paid and organic social, email, and retail, without compromising the quality of craft or the integrity of the product.