How Squarespace Reimagined Its Origin Story with Barry Keoghan

Squarespace unveiled its Super Bowl LIX ad earlier this week; a film directed by Biscuit’s Steve Rogers and created in-house. The 30-second spot, ‘A Tale As Old As Websites’ stars actor Barry Keoghan as a whimsical laptop-tossing, donkey-riding delivery boy, providing the residents of an old-timey Irish town with websites for their businesses.

Ahead of the Big Game on February 9th, the website building brand’s Super Bowl campaign has also involved a short film, in which Barry creates a website for his ass co-star, Mosley. A website design template was also created to accompany the 90-second teaser ad. “Over the years we’ve come to see the Super Bowl as more than just the actual football game,” explains Mathieu Zarbatany, group creative director at Squarespace.

“There’s a bunch of moments before and after the game that offer unique opportunities to reach more and more people. Our approach is to create the most exciting, engaging work for each of those moments.” 

The strategy for the Super Bowl this year - being the company’s 11th Big Game ad - was to lean on the insight that Squarespace has been around nearly as long as websites themselves. “We were inspired to reimagine Squarespace’s origin story and take it back even further – to a time where websites were delivered door-to-door like milk or the newspaper,” says Mathieu.

He describes the annual process of creating a Super Bowl campaign as “a labour of love” – a huge project that is ideated many months in advance, with hundreds of different ideas tested in a collaborative effort that involves the whole Squarespace team. 

Once an idea, or series of ideas, is settled on, the team then begins worldbuilding. In 2025, they landed on a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour, and the “timeless, almost poetic beauty” of Ireland. “After that, everything fell into place,” he says. 

“Once we had an idea of where we wanted the story to go, we started to think about who could help us bring it to life. We loved Barry [Keoghan] for this because he’s incredibly compelling whenever he is on screen. He has this unique ability to mix humour with seriousness, which made him perfect as our Squarespace man riding through town, inspiring people to bring their unique businesses to life online.”

And while Mathieu says the team “didn’t necessarily have ‘[The] Banshees [of Inisherin]’ in mind” when they were concepting the campaign, he admits that there are “definitely parallels” in the films’ settings, beyond Barry Keoghan’s presence in both. However, the Irish Atlantic coast – for all its beautiful scenery – did also pose some challenges for the production.

“The film was shot on the western coast of Ireland in December,” shares Mathieu. “The setting was absolutely stunning, but Ireland in December can be a bit wet and windy. One day, we even had to change locations after the coast guard told us the conditions were too dangerous for shooting. Despite the weather, we had a great time on set. It was a really special group of people and we always become such a family during these shoots.”

Leading this family was Biscuit director Steve Rogers, who joined the project after Barry Keoghan had been brought on board. “He was perfect for this year’s concept because not only is he one of the best commercial directors out there, but his work is always incredibly smart, funny and cinematic,” adds Mathieu. “[That’s] everything we needed to make this idea come to life.”

Above: 'Barry and Mosley' short film

After creating 11 of these Super Bowl campaigns since 2014, the team can now reflect on how its creative approach – and the demands of Big Game advertising – has evolved over the last decade.

“We now think about how to tell a holistic story that best brings viewers into the world of the campaign and introduces them to the characters,” he says. “Building the wider world for this campaign gave us a rich new canvas to tell our brand story, to showcase our product and how it can make any business look great. Even old-timey ones.”

Having previously released teasers and short films for its Big Game ads – like last year’s, directed by and starring Martin Scorsese –  and now continuing this formula with the ‘Barry and Mosley’ short in 2025, it goes to show that while websites may seem as old as this campaign’s tale, Squarespace’s Super Bowl strategy is certainly keeping up with the times.