Squarespace Changes Your World in FX Frenzy

Website building company Squarespace’s latest campaign is here to ‘Change Your World’. Created in-house and produced by Iconoclast, the trio of special effects-filled films show how Squarespace users can start and grow their own business on the site - from purchasing a domain to taking classes on ecommerce and more. 

Directorial duo Vania & Muggia plunge the audience – quite literally, in the case of ‘Scuba’ – into three surreal scenarios, where the protagonists’ businesses come to life in a very real way as they type at their laptops. ‘Bakery’ shows plumes of flour erupting from kitchen fixtures and lightbulbs becoming egg bombs, while ‘Muscles’ turns a room of diners into bulging bodybuilders, bursting buttons and breaking tables under their unwieldy strength. The third spot, ‘Scuba’ floods a man’s apartment until his scuba business has truly taken over his life.

LBB’s Ben Conway caught up with Squarespace’s creative director, Mathieu Zarbatany, to dive into the challenges of underwater filming, and discuss how a focus on practical effects helped these striking visual transformations leap from the screen.

LBB> Where did the creative spark for this campaign come from? What was the new strategy and goals for ‘Change Your World’, compared to previous marketing?

Mathieu> Creating a website can be one of the very first steps to bring a business idea to life. As you hit publish, it becomes real. It’s out in the world. We wanted to visualise this insight and how entrepreneurs around the world transform their realities in striking and beautiful ways.

Strategically, we focused on showcasing our two biggest and most popular offerings that go hand in hand – domains and websites, and make them an integral part of the films’ narratives.

LBB> How did the ‘A Website Makes It Real’ tagline inform and develop during this campaign?

Mathieu> We’ve been using this brand tagline as a creative platform pretty consistently throughout the years. From aliens wanting to legitimise their existence in our last Super Bowl commercial, to business ideas physically manifesting in this one, we aim to reinvent how ‘A Website Makes It Real’ comes to life in every campaign.

LBB> How did you decide on the different businesses to showcase? 

Mathieu> We were really excited by the potential of how each business could visually take shape and transform the entrepreneur's environment. The goal was to showcase a range of businesses but also a range of rich visual transformations.

LBB> Who did you work with on the production and set design? Each of the films has some wonderful practical effects as well as VFX; what were some of the most difficult effects to pull off?

Mathieu> Our directing duo, Vania & Muggia, assembled a really talented team to bring our common vision to life. We agreed early on to capture most of it in camera with practical effects as we wanted the films to have a distinct, raw look and stay away from an overpolished aesthetic. The most challenging part was definitely the scuba film and all the scenes taking place underwater.

LBB> ‘Scuba’ submerges a set entirely underwater – how did you achieve this?

Mathieu> The production team actually built a decent sized apartment inside a giant water tank. And as the shoot progressed, we would fill it up with water. So everything had to be captured in chronological order. [There was] no option to reshoot a previous setup with less water. And once the set was entirely submerged, we had to be very effective underwater with shorter takes as our main actor was performing submerged. 

LBB> Why were Vania & Muggia the ideal directors to partner with? 

Mathieu> Their entire creative approach aligned so perfectly with how we envisioned those films when we wrote them. This was very clear in our first call and in their subsequent treatment.

We both wanted to make something special that used a very realistic cinematic language, leaning heavily into practical effects – creating visual experiences that are believable, surprising and funny. Where the humour comes from seeing the culmination of details that give these surreal transformations some quirk and personality. They also shared their latest A$AP Rocky music video as a reference and it kind of blew our minds.

LBB> What are your favourite moments from the ads and why?

Mathieu> I love the smaller, more quiet moments of transformations taking place at the beginning of the films as our heroes are typing the very first characters of their domain name. Like the water spraying out of the electrical socket or the flour coming out of the keyboard, etc. I also laugh every time I see biceps morphing into bodybuilder’s in the ‘Muscle Club’ film.

LBB> Did you learn any lessons from being on set?

Mathieu> 1) Don’t write scripts taking place underwater. 2) Being surrounded by bodybuilders around the clock is surreal but it could motivate you to hit the gym and make some gains.

LBB> How does the campaign fit into Squarespace’s wider creative strategy? What can we expect from the rest of 2024 and beyond?

Mathieu> Whether we’re creating brand campaigns like this or creating more product and feature-focused work, our creative strategy is to always distil what we’re trying to say into a simple, understandable insight and bring it to life in the most interesting, creative and unexpected way possible. 

That informs the stories we tell, who we work with to tell them and the artists and talent we partner with. We always want to be at the forefront of creativity, making work that’s full of imagination to inspire current and future entrepreneurs to build their dreams with Squarespace.