Rigby is on a freelance gig. His day job is sniffing out cadavers for the police department, but today, the frisky retriever is on a soundstage in front of a camera. In a few minutes, a bunch of kids will kick off a taco party. Rigby’s only job is to look cute—and not eat the tacos.
Sophie, the stylist, has her doubts. “He went after my breakfast in two seconds,” she sighed. “I’m very worried.”
At first blush, you might guess that this is a film set in L.A. or perhaps a magazine shoot in Manhattan. It’s neither. We’re in North Carolina—at Home Depot.
Specifically, we’re at Project Orange, a hitherto shrouded enterprise that Home Depot established early in 2024 and has agreed to let a reporter in to see.
Project Orange isn’t just significant for what it is—a colossal facility equipped to produce nearly any creative asset a marketing department could want—but for what it represents. Home Depot’s aim is to create a lot more marketing content and do most of it with in-house talent.
Today’s shoot calls for the kids to make a cheese-and-guac-filled mess all over vinyl flooring from Lifeproof, a Home Depot house brand. Historically, the responsibility for staging a set, hiring a photographer, and booking kids and a dog would fall to an agency. But Project Orange is going it alone. Company officials say that the enterprise will not only reduce costs and streamline production but also enhance the brand’s standing, making it more appealing to Gen-Z consumers who are, after all, the homeowners of tomorrow.
“If we’re using agencies to create this content, there’s only so much you can do because it gets too expensive,” said Talitha Wiles, Studio Orange’s director of marketing operations. “This [facility] came along at a fantastic time to [produce] content at scale, at a reasonable cost, that you can control.”
An unexpected opportunity
Project Orange’s building really did just come along.
Until recently, the 240,000-square-foot facility—including staging areas, carpentry shop, and a dizzying array of props—belonged to Alderman Studios. For 125 years, the family business had photographed dressers, chests, and dining sets for the furniture makers that once filled this part of North Carolina.
