2024 Lifetime Achievement Award

Squarespace Floods Apartment in Splashy Spot

Scuba lessons can't start soon enough

Your apartment just sprung leaks—everywhere. Water’s cascading from light sockets, appliances and cupboards. Soon you’ll be submerged.

So, what should you do?

Now, you could attempt to swim out the door. Or, you can sit at your laptop and book a scuba lesson through Squarespace.

Either way, everything will probably work out fine.

Vania Heymann and Gal Muggia directed “Scuba” and two more visually dynamic spots, developed with Squarespace’s in-house team.

“Since acquiring Google Domains last year, Squarespace has become one of the largest global domain registrars,” Mathieu Zarbatany, the brand’s creative director, tells Muse. “So, we wanted to use this as an opportunity to showcase two of our biggest and most popular offerings that naturally go hand in hand—domains and websites.”

“Scuba” steals the show, but “Muscles” and “Bakery” also pack some narrative punch and memorable visuals:


Breaking this week, the push represents something of a shift for the brand following its Martin Scorsese-directed Super Bowl sci-fi extravaganza.

“Our last big campaign was set in a fantastical world of aliens trying to announce their presence on Earth,” notes Zarbatany “While these spots are fun and somewhat surreal, we wanted to ground the idea in real businesses that could truly exist on the Squarespace platform.”

With that goal in mind, “We selected a mix of companies that sell time and expertise, as well as ones that make physical items, reinforcing two ways that entrepreneurs can do business on our platform,” he says.

In “Scuba,” the team flooded a full-scale apartment set. The lead actor is a highly experienced diver (d’uh), and frogmen were on hand to provide oxygen and lift the dude out between takes.

“Almost the entirety of the film was practical and captured on camera except for the occasional fish here and there added later in post,” Zarbatany says.

For “Muscles,” the crew “had to shoot every scene twice,” he recalls. “First with our actors and then replicating the identical action with a bodybuilder, stitching it all together in post. And that’s how you get really jacked grandmas.”

All three ads are extremely well-made and memorable, with original tracks by Q Department enhancing the ambiance.

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