Video agency in Arles: UGC, TikTok and creative ads in the Camargue
In a city where people come every summer to look at images, the bar is high for a brand video: the Rencontres d'Arles welcomed 163,000 visitors at their 57th edition, in 2026.
Scroll to learn more ↓︎Shooting, editing and publishing for brands in Arles
In a city where people come every summer to look at images, the bar is high for a brand video: the Rencontres d'Arles welcomed 163,000 visitors at their 57th edition, in 2026. The municipality has 51,811 residents in 2023 according to Insee, spread over an immense territory that stretches all the way into the Camargue. Esekai crosses France from Paris to shoot TikTok and Meta ads, UGC testimonials and Reels that stand comparison with what Arles audiences are used to seeing.
See our workA municipality as big as a landscape
With 68.3 inhabitants per km² in 2023, Arles has the density of a rural municipality even though it is home to more than 50,000 people: the town proper occupies a small part of a territory made up of rice fields, marshes and mas. Insee's figures confirm it with a rare detail: 8.6% of the municipality's employer establishments belong to agriculture, forestry and fishing at the end of 2024. For a brand, this means two settings in a single municipality. The historic centre serves shops, hotels and cultural brands; the expanses of the Camargue serve producers, estates and any brand that needs a horizon. We often build an Arles shoot around that contrast, with a morning in town and the end of the day on the plain, when the light skims the lagoons.
Photography, publishing and the Parc des Ateliers
The tourist office notes that the École nationale supérieure de la photographie was founded in Arles in 1982 and is the only art school in France devoted to the medium. Alongside the Rencontres, the association La Kabine coordinates an off festival devoted to contemporary photography. A few minutes' walk from the centre, LUMA Arles occupies the Parc des Ateliers, a former 7-hectare industrial wasteland with 19th-century buildings and the tower designed by Frank Gehry. This cultural fabric creates a precise demand: galleries, bookshops, publishing houses, exhibition venues and hotels need short videos that make people want to come without betraying the aesthetic standards of the place. Here, a UGC creator who pushes too hard sounds false. We rather rely on composed shots, a restrained voice-over and a person from the venue talking about their work.
From the amphitheatre to the bicentenary of photography
The city is listed twice as a UNESCO World Heritage site, for "Arles, Roman and Romanesque Monuments" and as part of the Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France. The arena, the ancient theatre and the Alyscamps are recognisable in a second on TikTok, which makes them very effective backdrops for a hotel or restaurant that wants to locate its address. The calendar carries real weight: the 2027 edition of the Rencontres will run from 5 July to 3 October, with an opening week from 5 to 11 July, and from September 2026 to September 2027 the city is celebrating the bicentenary of the invention of photography. For a brand, it is a rare window of visibility, but also a period when hotels fill up and the streets of the centre are very busy. We prefer to shoot the product shots before July and keep the opening week for atmosphere.
Restaurants, mas and hotels in the old town
The municipality counts 2,340 employer establishments at the end of 2024, 66.2% of them in trade, transport and services, and 72% employing between 1 and 9 people. These are mainly restaurants, shops, guesthouses and craftspeople. Their clientele is twofold: Arlésiens who use them all year round and visitors who plan their stay from a distance. For a restaurant in the centre, a Reel shot on a terrace at sunset, two streets from the arena, does the job of ten photos. For a Camargue mas that welcomes guests, the UGC video of a couple discovering the room, then the horses or the marshes at dawn, is easily adapted into a Meta ad to run in the big cities its customers come from. We adapt the subtitle language to the countries targeted.
From the arena stone to the lagoons at dusk
Arles is filmed first at dawn: the stone of the monuments takes on a warm tint and the lanes are still empty, which means we arrive from Paris the day before. Scouting is done from photos with you, and permits are requested separately from the monument operators and the owners of the mas. For UGC, we look for creators from the Arles area or Marseille who know the Camargue as more than a postcard. The morning serves the centre, midday your establishment, when activity is most legible, and the last hour the plain, where the lagoons reflect the sky. This split gives the edit two worlds to alternate within a single ad, the city and the delta, which helps hold attention beyond the first three seconds.
Why creative ads deliver better results
An ad that looks like an ad gets skipped in a second. A creative ad works on the hook, the message and the format so it is watched to the end, then tested and adapted for as long as it converts.
Get resultsContent built to capture, engage and convert
Our approach to creative ads
Every video is designed to be tested, measured and then improved.
Strategy & audience analysis
Market, goals and audiences: we choose the angles to test.
Visual creation & ad copywriting
Scripts, shooting and editing to each platform's codes.
Testing, iteration & continuous optimisation
We compare the variants and roll out the winners.
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