To Hype Justworks, Quality Meats Told Its Own Story—More or Less

Why the agency took a personal approach to crafting the campaign

The best work comes from stuff that’s real. Not literally real—heck, a lot of the best stuff is completely made up. But rooted in real stuff, like experiences and feelings. And then made more compelling with made-up stuff.

When we were approached by Justworks, an HR and benefits platform for small business, it wasn’t just some random B2B brand. It was a place we turned to back when we were still just a few people who didn’t really feel like a real agency but put up a website that said we were.

We were taking on employees and committing to pay them every two weeks and offer them things like death and dismemberment insurance. It was all very real but also highly surreal. We had no idea what we were getting into but knew we couldn’t screw it up. Justworks made it feel a lot less scary. Which we needed, being anxious nervous humans.

Our point: Their story of how they help small businesses was a part of our story. So to help them tell it, we just kinda told our story.

We developed a creative platform based on our own small business fears and worries (of which there were many considering the whole anxious nervous human thing). And the ultimate benefit for any small business founder, the freedom of letting go when you’ve finally found someone you trust.

So we took all that real stuff but added made up stuff like a fast-casual boba restaurant owner who wants to clone herself and a sleepless architecture firm owner who connects his employees’ arms to his desk via ropes.

And then brought it to life with a director who was also a small business owner, Freddie Powell, founder of Drool Productions, who understood all that real stuff. And his approach to bringing to life the made up stuff was to make it all very real.

The campaign was shot practically in Bulgaria (which felt highly surreal), where we built a boba restaurant and an architecture office from scratch. Our boba owner relived the same 17ish seconds but standing in 50 different spots and wearing eight different costumes and hairstyles, intricately choreographing every movement so it would flow seamlessly once assembled together.

Our production team built a complex system of ropes and pulleys and levers, all converging at an office desk that was a mashup of an inventor’s workshop and the bridge of a 1960’s cargo ship, designed to look like a contraption built layer upon layer as the business grew. Our architecture office guy struggled to juggle all the ropes (the sweat was real), and his employees reacted candidly to being yanked around by them. We crafted a puppet to match the guy and a dolphin puppet with matching khaki pants, and filmed his surreal dream in a real way with stop motion.

Then our composer pal created tracks with real human voices and a balance of emotion and whimsy. And we searched far and wide for a VO that felt real, eventually finding one so real, he’s actually married to our CD/writer (the recording session was highly surreal for her).

Was it incredibly tedious and way more work than we thought it would be? Yes. Was it a literal example of the care and craft that any founder puts into their small business? Also yes.

Sure, it’s the story of hundreds of small businesses that Justworks has helped. But it was our story, too. So it was real. Although not literally real. But real enough to make it all work.