The Hillarys Brand Evolution

Adverts / Promotional video

Team Involved

Laura Cohen
Jonathan English
Nicole Driver
Sean Lee

The brief

Leading interiors brand, Hillarys, wanted to shake things up by creating a cutting-edge video-first campaign to launch their new ‘Softs’ product line.

To make sure the campaign was a hit, Hillarys teamed up with Skeleton to come up with a unique and captivating video strategy. We dug into the latest trends, brand preferences, audience insights, channel engagement, and product details. And after all our research, we developed the core creative idea of ‘Style Wars’.

Using an upbeat, motivational tone, the creative concept was to encourage viewers to be proud of their unique style — to stand out and explore the range of options available. We wanted it to be energetic in pace, bouncing from one person’s style to the next, and showcasing a variety of aesthetic preferences across the different audience segments, ultimately underscoring the tagline: “Your Home, Your Way”.

Goals & Objectives

The main goal of the campaign was to create a video that would truly connect with viewers on an emotional level and establish Hillarys as a leader in the interiors industry. But they also wanted to inspire people to explore their own personal style and creativity.

Skeleton took a comprehensive approach to the campaign, beginning with a digital audit and moving through audience and trend insights to develop a targeted strategy that would shape the creative.

The Softs collection launch was the perfect opportunity for Skeleton to tell authentic stories about how their products could be a part of their customers’ daily lives. We used audience insights and market trends to create content that was highly specific to each member of their diverse customer base, as well as each platform in the channel strategy. This leads us nicely onto…

The channel strategy

I know, you might be thinking: ‘shouldn’t this part come later?’, but where you're going to post your video is actually one of the first things you need to be thinking about, especially if you want to make sure your content lands with your intended audience.

By identifying your target audience and their preferred social channels, you can optimise your videos for maximum impact across those channels. This means considering things like the variety and length of content for different campaign stages, the shape of the image (eg square, portrait or landscape), the timing and rhythm of the edits, and where the 'hook' moments are.

When the Skeleton team plans a campaign or even an individual piece of video content, one of the key things we think about is who the target audience is and which social channels they're most likely to hang out in. If the content is for a client's website only, the design may be quite different compared to if the content needs to work across different social channels.

We wanted to make sure that Hillarys' videos looked beautiful on all the platforms their customers use. So, once we got a detailed distribution plan, we knew what we needed to shoot for each channel to make sure it looked great in all shapes and sizes.

The creative

The main concept behind the campaign was to encourage people to freely express their personal style and creativity. The tagline 'Your Home, Your Way' aimed to inspire individuals to be proud of their unique tastes.

The campaign had a fun and energetic vibe, and showcased a range of different styles that catered to different audiences. We made sure to include the latest interior design trends, like biophilic design, sustainable furnishings, and mindful spaces, to keep everything fresh and relevant.

The entire creative direction of this campaign relied on us having a deep understanding of Hillarys' target customers. That means everything from character development to room styling and product choices was informed by the beliefs, values, and typical lifestyles of their target audiences.

We had eight buyer personas to build out, which we merged into the characters you see below: Simon and his daughter Lily, Georgia and her husband Tom, Molly, and Nicky. And so, we created a realistic, 3-dimensional profile of each character by asking things like:

- What stage of life are they at?
- What do they like to do in their spare time?
- How would they be feeling?
- How would those characters live in their spaces?

Take Nicky's character, for example, who's loving having more personal space in her life now her kids have left home. She's enjoying letting the sun in when she does her daily yoga in her new space, and cuts loose with the disco ball as she gets ready for a night out...

Using key trends, psychographic profiling, and social listening, we built each character their own story and unique style to tap into the things they care about when building their home space.

After all, we wanted their target customers to see themselves reflected in this campaign. To look at these beautiful spaces and think: "yeah, that's a bit of me."

The results

We couldn't be more excited about the end result of this beautiful project; a video-first campaign designed to grab attention, keep viewers engaged, and evoke emotion across multiple target personas and channels.

It was all about using video to connect with people on social media, get more people interested in Hillarys, and change the way people thought about the brand.

It's amazing to think that just six months ago, we were all gathered in a meeting room, sharing ideas. And now, we've brought those ideas to life on film and shared them with the world.

We want to give a big shoutout to our amazing team who put their heart and soul into this project, as well as the team at Hillarys for trusting in our strategy and vision to create something truly remarkable for them.