ZEINA Case Study: Producing Premium Jewelry Visuals with AI Without Compromising the Brand

"Without Kira, we wouldn't have launched this campaign." - Anthony Cohen - CEO of ZEINA Alliances

In a context where marketing teams must produce faster, more often, and across more channels, the question is no longer whether to use AI, but how to integrate it without compromising the brand.

The ZEINA case shows that AI can become a true accelerator — provided it's framed by a clear method, high standards, and appropriate support.

This case study analyzes how a premium jewelry brand transformed its way of producing visuals, reconciling speed of execution with high quality standards.

1. Introduction to ZEINA

ZEINA is a French jewelry brand specializing in the wedding universe.

Positioned in the premium segment, the brand builds its identity around a strong emotional register, with a strategy resolutely oriented toward retail. The in-store experience, perceived quality, and consistency of brand image constitute key pillars of its development.

ZEINA currently operates 13 boutiques across France, with several openings planned in the short term to support its growth.

Interior of Zeina Jewelry boutique, with glass display cases featuring rings, contemporary suspended lighting, and elegant reception area. — Zeina Boutique, 1 Place des Victoires, Paris 1st

The company relies on a team of approximately 50 employees, distributed across creative, retail, marketing, and operations functions.

2. Business Context

In a phase of sustained growth, ZEINA faces two major strategic challenges:

Accelerating the development of its retail network
Sustainably establishing its position as a reference brand, by reinforcing the consistency, recognition, and desirability of its image.

In this context, visual content is not just marketing execution.

It constitutes a central lever of brand and distribution strategy.

In jewelry, imagery plays a profoundly inspirational role: it precedes the product, builds trust, and directly participates in the purchase decision, both online and in-store.

3. The Starting Point

Before integrating AI into its thinking, ZEINA relied primarily on physical photoshoots, organized as needed. Depending on the period, the brand conducted between two and eight shoots per year, without a truly fixed cadence.

Despite this production effort, a realization gradually emerged internally:

"We were doing shoots, but we couldn't produce enough quality visuals."

The problem wasn't volume, but the difficulty of maintaining a constant level of standards over time.

As Anthony Cohen summarizes:

"The problem was never quantity, but the level of standards."

Each shoot involved different teams, vendors, and constraints. As iterations accumulated, the brand found itself confronted with a permanent trade-off between quality and quantity, two objectives difficult to reconcile simultaneously.

This fragmented approach eventually generated a lack of visual homogeneity. The universes varied too regularly to establish true campaign continuity, making the brand image less identifiable over time.

In this context, another gap appeared very clearly: the images produced to meet e-commerce needs — functional, descriptive — were not sufficient to convey the brand's desirability on social networks or in campaigns.

"Producing 50 photos doesn't mean having 50 good images," as Anthony Cohen emphasizes.

A Structured Reflection, Not a Fad

There was no trigger leading ZEINA to turn to AI. Indeed, the approach was part of continuous monitoring of tools capable of improving team efficiency, without compromising brand image.

Generative AI appeared to Anthony Cohen as a potential lever among others, with a clear conviction from the start: a brand cannot exist solely through AI.

The challenge wasn't to replace human creativity, but to precisely identify which uses could be handled by AI, and under what conditions. Vision, artistic direction, and creative standards remain profoundly human.

4. Collaboration with Kira

Before settling on Kira, ZEINA tested several self-service image generation solutions. The objective was clear: identify a tool capable of supporting visual production without degrading the quality level expected of a jewelry house.

ZEINA tested Kira's AI image production and post-production offering, combining a visual creation platform and an AI post-production phase intended to ensure accurate, consistent rendering that meets product requirements.

Very quickly, a gap appeared.

"We stopped all other tools because the quality wasn't up to par."

"If we settled on Kira and abandoned the other tools, it's because we found the solution that, in terms of quality, met what we wanted in product integration."

From the first tests with Kira, as Anthony Cohen confirms, the difference was noticeable, particularly in product integration and respect for details — determining criteria in the jewelry industry.

"From the first visuals, the difference was obvious."

The choice of Kira also stood out for its ease of use. Unlike many tools requiring fine mastery of prompting, adoption was quick and accessible to the entire team, without depending on an expert profile.

In use, this simplicity was confirmed. The tool integrated naturally into work routines, allowing several team members to produce visuals, iterate, and test ideas without excessive technical complexity.

This fluidity and speed of execution never came at the expense of quality, as Anthony Cohen emphasizes:

"We didn't compromise, even on details."

Finally, the support from the Kira team played a key role in the decision to commit for the long term.

"The onboarding and first results convinced us."

5. What This Changes Concretely

"Without the tool, we wouldn't have even launched this campaign."

The most concrete impact of the collaboration lies in the ability to launch campaigns that, until then, would not have been undertaken due to their complexity, cost, or production timelines. In ZEINA's case, Kira enabled unlocking visual communications where traditional production simply would not have been undertaken.

"You can be just as inspiring, convey emotion with AI shoots produced by Kira as you would otherwise. So we're not compromised on quality or results."

"We manage to have both emotion and quality."

ZEINA created with Kira both still life and on-model visuals, all in 2K resolution, the minimum resolution to ensure precise rendering for jewelry visuals, where every detail of a piece must be magnified.