How Squarespace Created 'Visual Worlds' In-Camera (Mostly) for Its Latest Adverts

The brand's GCD explains how it all came together

Squarespace just launched a trio of ads that bring unconventional business dreams to life.

We watch a man plan wellness retreats from his barcalounger, see a goth employee style her colleagues with one click and observe a house turn into a skydiving school.

Created in-house and directed by Walid Labri of Love Song, the spots are running on CTV, paid social, online video and display in the U.S. and U.K.

Muse caught up with Mathieu Zarbatany, group creative director at Squarespace, to learn about the campaign’s evolution and behind the scenes antics.

Muse: Explain the brief and what were the business goals?

Mathieu Zarbatany: Our goal was to showcase the full range of businesses that Squarespace supports and to highlight how our platform helps entrepreneurs not just build a website, but truly launch and grow their ideas. The “Change Your World” campaign captured that message in a simple and visually striking way. So, we wanted to carry that momentum forward while evolving the story.

For this next chapter, we created an eclectic mix of characters, business ideas and visual worlds. The storytelling framework remains familiar. But each journey was designed to feel as distinctive and surprising as the entrepreneurs at the heart of it.

How did you evolve your approach for this latest round of spots?

We wanted to build on the simplicity and magic while finding fresh ways to expand its storytelling universe. That led us to create three distinct personas and visual worlds, each representing a different kind of entrepreneur who might turn to Squarespace to bring their idea to life.

As the campaign developed, our design team came up with the idea of building real Squarespace templates inspired by each persona’s world. It was a natural way to extend the storytelling beyond the screen, giving viewers the chance to move from inspiration to creation the moment they felt that spark.

Was it especially challenging to craft these distinct worlds?

One of the highlights of production was capturing everything in-camera using practical effects. There is a certain magic that comes from doing it all for real, so we knew we wanted to build on that approach again this year whenever possible.

For the “Ohm” spot, that meant figuring out how to take our protagonist from his living room to a remote mountain top, with several unexpected locations along the way. Our director, Walid Labri, pitched the idea of having him travel entirely from the comfort of his couch. The design team took that concept and ran with it, engineering a fully motorized armchair that could move fast enough to weave through traffic and climb hills. Watching it tear up the road for the first time on set was one of those moments where the entire crew just grinned. It was that perfect mix of disbelief and delight that happens when an idea really comes to life.