Ep. 205 with Nate Skinner, Senior Director of Global Brand, Squarespace

[music] You're listening to a media post production. This episode is supported by Wonder Can Ads, Performance, Powered by Kindness. Wonder Can Ads helps brands turn natural brows, paws, and scroll moments into high performing CTV and display campaigns. No interruptions, just use your first timing that drives real results. Discover more at WonderCanAds.com. Now onto the episode. Welcome to the brand insider, where each week we go one-on-one with the brightest minds in marketing. I'm your host Douglas Parks, and in today's episode, we're going to talk about how brands show up on the biggest stage. For many marketers and creatives, a super bowl spot is a career-defining moment, and it's not just the cultural fanfare around the ads. For any business, it's a tremendous opportunity. And it's a risk. The average 30-second spot in the 2026 game cost around $8 million. $8 million for the amount of time since I kicked off this introduction until now. How will you best use that time? What is the creative hook that cuts through every other brand that's bringing their absolute A game to stand out to? What products, benefits, promotion will be featured? What's your CTA? Our guest today is no stranger to the bright lights. Squarespace has starred in 12 consecutive super bowls, a monumental feat of creativity and brand strategy, let alone stamina to consistently deliver breakthrough moments year after year. From aliens over cityscapes to a reprisal of Dolly Parton's 9-5, their storytelling and ability to depthly tap into cultural moments and celebrities is all but unmatched. In this year's spot, a dramatic and gothic vision, featuring Emma Stone, is no exception. How did it come to life? What was the strategy in the insights underpinning their latest campaign? And how does it support their broader brand goals? We're going to find out as I talk with Nate Skinner, Senior Director of Global Brand at Squarespace. Welcome, Nate. Hey, great to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, very excited to dig into this, because the Super Bowl is one of the most competitive advertising stages on the planet. It might be the most competitive advertising, you know, opportunity that's out there. So where I'd love to begin is just to understand what was the internal conversation like when you started to scope out this year's campaign? What were you trying to accomplish that you hadn't done in the 12 previous years you'd ran this? Yeah, sure. Well, to your point, we've done the Super Bowl 12 year. This is our 12th year. And so the conversations around will we do it? Really do revolve around like, well, what do we have to say this year? And I think this year we had in particular something that we really wanted to talk about that we felt was a really simple, clear and direct message that probably stood apart from some of the Super Bowls that we've done more recently that are kind of broader and about like websites, which the decision to do those was really based on the idea that like our platform is for anybody. The Super Bowl is the one time people really actually want to consume ads, and it's the one place that you can reach literally everybody. So it does a really good job for just the Squarespace website message in general. But this year we had a domains project that a domains product that we had acquired from Google domains a couple of years ago. And we've been kind of working on the product experience and making sure that it was like ready for prime time. And we really felt like this year it was. And that this was a really great hook for us to kind of say something a little bit different than we've been saying and revolve the entire campaign really around the simplest entry point for literally anyone to become a Squarespace customer. And that is to become a Squarespace domains customer first because you don't really need to have a business idea or a fully fleshed out notion of what you want to build. You just have to have that one kernel. And so we felt like that was such an easy message to convey to a huge amount of people that this was the right time to go really hard at domains this year. All right, and so we're gonna dig into all of that. But I think we have to kind of frame up the actual creative itself. It's what everyone tunes in for. It's what all the discussion hangs around. I'm sure you just laboriously went through storyboard by storyboard. The list starts beginning. Tell me about the genesis of the unavailable ideas. I think the campaign is titled, Where did this all come from? And I'm not even sure how to give it verbal justice. But tell me a little bit about like the way it plays out. Yeah. So unavailable. I mean, it's essentially you need to get your domain before it's gone, right? There are a finite number of domains. And if you don't get the one that you want, you're going to have to compromise or figure out a different name or figure out a different TLD that was different than the one that you wanted. So there's kind of two parts to it. One, we wanted to talk about domains in a way that made it feel essential and not just something that you could do, but something that you really need to do and kind of get on top of it. And then two, we kind of liked the idea that it built urgency into a brand statement, right? So it built urgency into something that typically is just sort of like, we usually say like a website makes it real. It's usually about the brand at large. And this year we were able to kind of like take a brand line and also make it a little bit of a CTA. And so that's where we kind of are like, are we are we thinking about like that like the fear of missing out a little bit too much. And we kind of came to this place of like, no, if we present the creative in a way that is really, really entertaining and really, really brand forward that buys us kind of a lot of equity to be able to put a tagline at the end that's kind of get your domain before you lose it. And is a little bit of a CTA and a little bit of a product line. We were able to kind of trojan horse that into the idea. So that's what got us really, really excited about it from the jump. Yeah. Now this is really fascinating to me because I think most brands they try to focus just on benefits and they want to steer clear of anything that resembles a pain point or a friction in the in the customer experience. And I have to imagine domain unavailability is one of your top customer complaints or one of the things that you hear about most often as being one of those sources of friction. And you made that the star of one of the biggest ad spots, probably the biggest one you'll run all year. So tell me a little bit more about how you how you honed in on that and then what that approach unlocks for you. Well, you know, the fear angle is one way to kind of look at it. You could also look at it as a scarcity angle, right? And domains as resource. And they're like, we don't make the rules. There are only certain amounts of words that could be domains. And so it is just a reality of if you if you want the domain that you want, somebody else may have it already. And if someone does have it, you can always get it, but it's going to cost you more money. So it wasn't necessarily playing into that fear as much as it was acknowledging the actual marketplace for domains. And then yeah, from that point of view, I mean, I think we always like to be a little bit provocative, a little bit left of center, maybe approach brand from a point of view that other brands may not choose. And I think that that's what, you know, we want it if we're going to spend this much money and put ourselves on a stage of this large, we want it to be entertaining and to have some stakes and to feel as though like we are saying something that really matters. And I think the only way to really do that is to kind of lean into the truth of the matter. And so the truth of the matter is if you don't get your domain, you're going to have to figure out something else to do. And we wanted to just kind of highlight that. And it made for like an extremely entertaining kind of world or ecosystem around not just the sewer will add, but like the entire campaign. Yeah. So and you're spot on it. Look at your career history of all the different spots that have ran. Provocation is threaded throughout and you have a little bit of some edge and grit to your to your storytelling. And I want to talk about that a little bit because you've had a lot of celebrity highlights, everything from Jeff Bridges to Adam Driver. And now we have Emma Stone smashing laptops on some stormy rocky, you know, Shutter Island. How do you maintain brand and creative equity in square space? Well, making sure that the spots still feel fresh and vibrant and stand out. You know, dozens of other spots that are clamoring for that same attention at Super Bowl. Yeah, I think one of the main ways honestly is we've got an in house team who has this is not their first Super Bowl. And they've worked with the brand for a really long time. So I think we uniquely understand the DNA of like what a square space Super Bowl ad is. And so I think that's like really the most important thing with under like making sure there's some continuity between 12 different Super Bowl spots over 13 different years, right? And I think we've had the same creative leadership that entire time. And there's been a lot of people on the team who have been here before and I think like once you start to prove to the market and prove to creatives kind of in general that this is sort of the lens that we look at, it becomes pretty easy to understand like, is this a square space ad? Is this a square space? Superble ad? Is this even a square space idea? I think then the second part of that is you mentioned all of the talent that we have used over the years. There are never people who are just famous for the sake of being famous, right? There's always this idea of craft baked in. We are looking to work with people who are really masters of their craft and are people who feel like they're just a little bit just outside of the mainstream. I know that sounds kind of crazy. You know, we used Emma Stone and she's extraordinarily famous, but I think what we tapped into with Emma Stone was her acting abilities and her dramatic abilities and leaning into what makes her so amazing and great on screen. And so I think like whenever we are working with celebrity or talent, we're trying to do it from the perspective of how do we make great entertainment? How do we make great art even though it is advertising? Like, what is the lens that we can put on it that kind of takes it up a couple of notches versus just sort of caching in on the fact that they happen to be a really famous person? So I think that those two things kind of coincide as red threads that kind of hold the body work together over the last 12 years. Yeah, it strikes me that consistently you're blaring the line between advertisement and genuine cinema. And so that's a truly unique kind of approach to not just have it in one spot, but across the continuity of all the super balls that you've run. So now as it's been well established, like y'all are pros at this. And so many brands I think struggle with the production timeline of a super bowl spot. It's always down to the wire behind the scenes like everything is moving, pivoting, you're trying to nail it just right. Give me a little bit of a peek behind the curtain at square space. What does that production process look like from brief to final cut? Maybe some of those lessons that people can take away if they're ever dabbling in the most visible moment of the year. Every year is completely different. There are so many variables and details that go into one of these productions that some of it has to do with like literally being on the shoot and in the production and trying to deal with variables there. A lot of it has to do with scheduling and availability and when people can do what and when we rally around an idea and sometimes you work for months on an idea and you have a couple people in mind who would be perfect for it and then they're not available. And so you go to the next person and the idea doesn't work as well. So you have to go back to the start of the drawing board and start over. So I guess like the TLDR is any amount of obstacles can occur. There is no like perfect way to do cerebral. So I think like the key is being like really flexible and kind of also really a resolute on the fact that you're going to do it and it's going to be great and you're going to figure it out eventually. This year was probably one of the more seamless years to be totally honest. We start ideating early summer and we will have many many many ideas like 50 60 ideas and we'll just kind of start calling through them throwing ones out that don't feel specific for right punching up ones that really start to and we'll kind of get a short list by the end of the summer early fall and that's when we start putting all the details together like how do we build it who's going to be in it and that's when things start to kind of coalesce. I would say I honestly I've only worked on suitable commercials for Squarespace so I don't know when other people are shooting their suitable commercials. It's generally the end of the year, November, December and then you're working through January to kind of finish it up and get kind of everything in place for it to kind of go live mid-February but that's not a discrete timeline. You know like you have to add like 20% plus or minus on either side of like the the schedule your own expectations the expectations of others so it's a lot of conversations it's a lot of being flexible and it's kind of a lot of rolling with it and just sort of trusting that the idea that you set out to create is attainable and you can you will find some way to bring it to life in the best way possible. Definitely and so what strikes me from that is regardless of timeline seems like to take away is you have to be both feed in you can't try to saddle are we in are we out or being a bigger this out in time it's a you got to be totally on the game. So let's uh let's talk a little bit about the message itself. You have 30 seconds maybe a full minute depending on what you've purchased in order to to pay off the CTA or the the kind of core you know approach to your to your program. How do you balance the storytelling with a clear product message in that compressed window take me through some of those puts and takes. Yeah well it it first of all helps if you have a really clear uh direct thing you want to say like if you know what you want to say that guides every other decision um where you get into trouble is when you are just you you you have kind of a vague idea of what the take away should be. So this year we knew we wanted to we wanted to make people aware that square space is a place that you can get domains. I think a lot of people think square space is a place that I can build a website and so in some ways going out with a message that you need a domain in order to get a website so it's not so far away from each other but it's new right it's not something that we've said in a very long time especially in a state-child-cassureable and I think that that focus and that specificity that kind of catalyzed the story a little bit right and it kind of is the thing that the all of the parts of the ecosystem kind of hang off of we want people to understand that square space is the best place for you to get a domain and build a website. Once we kind of had that we just made sure that in the 30 in the 90 that really came through we wanted to also talk about other parts of you know getting a divain or not getting a domain so we built out other pieces of content with Emma Stone one that was literally a PSA for making sure you get the domain that you want so that you're not filled with the anguish and horror that she was to find out that she didn't actually own Emma Stone.com the CTN that was basically like don't be like me get a domain from a square space right and so we found all of these other parts of the story where we didn't have to have the 30 do everything a 30 had to do one thing and then we could kind of do other things with other pieces of content and of course those also need to be deeply entertaining or else there's no point in putting that on social but that is the thing that you can do when you get some of these actors and directors who are extraordinarily talented in making entertainment for the purpose of entertainment and putting them in an advertising context it makes the ecosystem of content really come to life and really be things that like people actually want to watch and want to pay attention to and I think if you can attract attention organically and have a really really specific message you're going to have a very successful campaign absolutely you know I'd love to know how many laptops she ended up breaking in the process of that shoot I'm sure it was quite a few. It's funny because last year we had we we were also throwing laptops so maybe we'll go for a trifecta next year and really there's your new red thread. Yeah the red thread is we want to destroy as many laptops as possible. Oh my gosh they were all they were all out of use non-workable laptops I just want to make that a very noble purpose. Yes, it's like many. Exactly. Absolutely. All right so let's let's talk a little bit about you know within the message as we dissect it there's this idea of of the brand side to it of elevating square space bringing awareness to your domain expertise then you mentioned the urgency right of get it before it's gone and that feeds into a kind of broader trend I'm seeing in marketing right now where a lot of brand teams are being tasked to drive both awareness and conversion within the same creative this kind of idea of like a brand formats approach to marketing. How do you view this specific campaign this touch point within that spectrum and then how does that feed into your success metrics how are you thinking about what a KPI looks like for a campaign like this. Totally yes the word brand formats has been thrown around here as well and I think this year the campaign was it was kind of equal parts brand and performance and I kind of getting back to what I said a little bit earlier about the actual tagline being a brand line while also being a bit of a CTA that really helped and I think in general right you're looking at brand awareness lift you're looking at consideration lift you're looking at how is our perception what are people saying about us on social like those kinds of things with kind of big brand campaigns this one in particular it was we had a lot of that we you know in our results deck there's a whole lot of videos that people made about how we shot it the craft in which we shot it the message behind it there's a whole slew of Reddit and fan communities who love your ghosts and Emma who are talking about this. and so like those are all really, really important KPIs, but this year in particular, we were able to, I mean, it all directs back to either emustone.com or to squarespace.com or squarespace or our domains landing site. And so we were able to actually track landings and registrations and trials because we were driving such a specific product message in this larger context, this larger campaign context of the Super Bowl. And so we were actually able to see like within minutes, like spikes across landings, registrations, trials, that carried on for quite a bit of time. And so from that point of view, I think that this was really a successful campaign for us. We felt really, really good about the investment from a brand standpoint, but also just driving people to the product and making them not just aware that domains is something that squarespace should be known for, but also people actually actively going and getting domains from a squarespace, which is fantastic. - Yeah, so you have, you've put a lot of equity now into the campaign, into the creative, into this emustone partnership. Tell me about the longevity. How does this live beyond game day or does it even live beyond February? - Yeah, so we are running the campaign in through the middle of April. And what it's also given us is the ability. So if we think about it as like a spike, right? This was like our, a bit of like a 2026 launch moment for squarespace domains. We did it really big. We got amazing talent, incredible directorial talent. We did it at the Super Bowl and was able to get all of this organic PR kind of around it. So that is like our moment to say squarespace equals domains and websites. We're following that up now with a campaign called Dream It Domain It, which will run longer and beyond the unavailable campaign. And that is really specifically about different TLDs that you we offer. It's about, it's kind of like our website makes it real but make it domains. So that is something that we're all running in many different markets globally. And so the Super Bowl, it was an opportunity to create this big swell of attention around this message of domains. And while we can't, we're not going to run the Emma Stone creative like all year long, it does provide a deeper pool for additional creative kind of swimming where we now have the awareness around domains so we can be more particular with our message about what a domain gets you and even like go from domains to website to all the products, tools and services that are underneath the experience of just having a domain or hosting website on Squarespace. - Got it, love it. Well, this has been a lot of fun and where I think I want to end on is you mentioned earlier that your planning cycle begins in the summer, which terrifyingly enough, there's only three months, four months away from now. And so what did you learn from this past campaign that will inform some of your thinking, your decision-making and the upcoming planning cycle? - Yeah, I mean, I think it's something that we have known for a while, but it's always really good to just have it reinforced with an experience that validates the way that we were thinking. And I think it's really easy to go really big and broad and sometimes vague in these larger moments. But I really feel like in a world where attention is at such, it's so difficult to capture anyone's attention, even at the Super Bowl. Simple, direct and clear is the best way to approach it from what do you want people to take away? And then the dressing that you kind of put around that, the environment that you put around it, the signals that you give off to other communities like the creative community or the design community by doing it all in 35 millimeter, working with your ghosts, but also his entire team that has done all of these critically acclaimed movies that he's done with them as stone, like baking those kinds of signals in, we don't have to say that we're for the design community or for the creative community in an ad about domains. The ad can just be about domains, but there's a way to bring that craft in that cinematic angle in the environment that that message kind of sits in. And I think that that is always something that we kind of know intuitively, but it's really nice to validate it and say like, "Oh yeah, we don't have to say everything all at once on this one stage, say a really specific thing, and then kind of put window dressing around it in a way that packages it so that all the other people who you want to kind of reach through additional signals, they're kind of getting those signals loud and clear without missing the main message. - Yeah, again, it just strikes me that you've really figured out the art of context and subtext to your marketing, and that's really commendable. Well, thank you Nate, I really appreciate your insights in your time today, this was a lot of fun. - Yeah, this was a blast, thanks for having me. - That's it for this week's episode. Thanks to our sponsor, Wonder Can Ads, Performance Powered by Kindness. Learn more at WonderCanads.com. See you next week on Brand Insider. (dramatic music) [BLANK_AUDIO]