Squarespace Dives into the Thrill of Creation with Unconventional Walid Labri Films

Last year, Squarespace launched its ‘Change Your World’ platform, but this year’s trio of spots directed by Love Song’s Walid Labri takes a more unconventional approach to making business dreams a reality.

Starting with 30-second ads ‘Goth’ and ‘Ohm’, the new campaign captures the feeling of starting something new, and the critical role a website plays in that process for entrepreneurs. ‘Goth’ shows an office of mundane colleagues bursting into macabre styling, while ‘Ohm’ follows a wellness guru placidly riding a magical moving couch to a wellness retreat.

“The businesses we focused on might be unconventional, but they’re really just taking things our customers are passionate about and, through a few simple steps, moving from idea to reality, with somewhat surreal results,” explains Nate Skinner, senior director of global brand at Squarespace, speaking to LBB.

“We find that entrepreneurship doesn’t always take a conventional shape and no matter what type of business you’re starting, the thrill of creating something that didn’t exist before connects all founders.

“The strategy here is to tap into that feeling and show how Squarespace is a platform for any entrepreneur, in the most entertaining and engaging way possible.”

The third film, launched this week, ‘Skydive’ turns the surrealness up a notch, showing an adrenaline junkie and her house being transported into freefall as she creates a website for a skydiving school. With VFX from Time Based Arts, we see furniture flying and curtains billowing until the house completely disintegrates as it plummets towards the ground. Of course, the protagonist’s parachute appears as she continues designing the website, fully realising her vision of the business.

“For our larger campaigns, we always want to pick businesses that feel creative, possibly slightly left of centre, and of course, are entertaining to watch,” adds Nate. “A lot of the magic of these spots exists in how viscerally these business ideas come to life.”

The idea of taking “supposedly mundane themes and flipping them into something completely different” was what attracted director Walid Labri to the project. “Three films where the unexpected unfolds in the mundane caught my interest,” he says.

Discussing the ‘Ohm’ spot, with its fantastical special effects, Walid explains, “The couch moving through the streets is the elevated, surreal thing, so we reversed everything else. [From] camera language to lighting – all practical. The chair moving was in-camera. Push the envelope tonally; keep the image digestible.”

And when it came to the latest ‘Skydive’ film, being more VFX-heavy, he shares, “The only real challenge was keeping the crew’s imagination alive and making sure they saw what VFX could do. Technically, we were ready. It was about imagination, not logistics.”

For this campaign, all of the spots are also accompanied by custom Squarespace website design templates, inspired by the films themselves, that can help new users get their start.

​Albert Chang, brand design manager at Squarespace says that the three “unniquely expressive” films allowed the brand team to develop corresponding templates built on that very sense of individuality, while extending the view into those worlds.

“Each template draws on distinct design elements to bring their creativity to life,” he says. “Highlights include shape image blocks, an animated logo, scrolling text, pinned blocks, and a seamless single-page scroll. Together, these features reflect the personality of each spot while providing Squarespace users with flexible and inspiring frameworks to make their own."

Going forward, all three of the spots will be running on CTV/BVOD, paid social, online video and display in the US and UK, and Nate suggests it’s far from the end of this platform and positioning for Squarespace.

“There’s intentional consistency in building off the equity we’ve created with ‘A Website Makes it Real’ - it’s a brand truth we believe in that continues to position entrepreneurship as an aspirational endeavor. We are continuously evolving our platform, positioning us as the best place to start and grow a business with a connected suite of tools and products, all grounded in design and simplicity.”