Justworks:
Every Business Starts Small
This campaign empowers founders without restricting their growth dreams. Justworks stands with every kind of business journey because of one factor that unites all customers — every business starts small.
We brought real customer stories to life.
From out-of-home ads,
to one hero video, all made in-house.
(…And ten variations with refreshed scripts and company-specific spots).
Last but not least,
we optimized for SEO through
long-form case studies on the web.
The
Brief
The Process
The
Finale
As a brand awareness campaign, storytell to business owners how they can lean on Justworks to grow, sustain, or begin their business. However, the language and visuals should not define the future of any business as that can exclude customers from relating to our product — successful big businesses and small startups should resonate with all parts of the campaign and how Justworks can help.
For the first time, we passed the mic to real Justworks customers through a series of online interviews to humanize and add credibility to the brand. As our competitors mainly advertised through product abstractions, we knew this would make a significant splash in the industry.
The first stage of copy looks like a stash of endless variations in a doc (refer to the left). Partnering with key stakeholders, I made significant explorations and revisions that sharpened the final copy into a meaningful, impactful construct. At a glance, our case studies started off with something like this:
Example 1, Universal Standard: Two best friends build size-inclusive fashion brand from tiny apartment. Now Universal Standard.
Example 2, Aunt Flow: A student advocates for no more toilet paper pads. Period. Now Aunt Flow.
I was telling the individual origin story, but clearly this path wasn’t relatable to all customers and lacks engagement if you aren’t aware of the company. The question became: how can I create a more generic construct that memorializes each founder’s unique story while also staying relatable to all small business journeys? Then, it became:
Example 1, Universal Standard: For when your groundbreaking business breaks out of the garage.
Example 2, Aunt Flow: For when a series of “no’s” leads to your series A.
The result encompasses key moments relatable to small businesses, features real moments of the founder’s journey, and talks directly to our people.
I wrote a bank of hero headlines to represent all thirteen founders featured in our nationwide campaign, all authentic and emotional yet general enough to stay relatable. I referred to real customer interviews conducted over two months, spearheaded the creative process from concept ideation to asset creation, and worked cross-functionally to support every channel’s needs.
This campaign and my copy went out into the real world on:
Out-of-home ads: billboards, subways, and digital screens in Austin, LA, SF, Denver, NY, NJ, CT, and Miami
Events: TechCrunch, StartUp Week
Paid Media: Meta, Google, LinkedIn, Display banners
Video: YouTube, CTV
Website: Homepage refresh, new case study blog posts
A special note: each handwritten element is from a real small business founder in the Justworks community. Plus, I got to reunite with Clove (my previous workplace and proud Justworks user) for this campaign, bringing my copywriting journey to a full circle.