Overview
Sun Life's life insurance paid media campaign needed new awareness video assets. The existing OLVs were fatigued and underperforming. The fully-produced agency spots in the pipeline were delayed with no clear delivery date. The campaign needed something to run on — fast, and within a budget that left almost no room.
Working with our in-house videographer, I concepted, pitched, and produced two original 15-second awareness OLVs with 6-second cutdowns — built around Sun Life's "Partner Right" campaign platform, shot with minimal resources, and delivered for national paid media.
My Role
End to end: creative concept, moodboard, storyboard, pitch deck, props research and sourcing, on-set direction, stakeholder management, and delivery. One videographer. No agency. No talent budget. No production space beyond what we had.
Creative Concept
The "Partner Right" platform frames Sun Life's audience as people who want to protect their family's future — not financial experts, just people who care. The creative brief called for a clean, minimal aesthetic and simple, familiar analogies that communicate that emotional territory without saying it directly.
The approach: focus on everyday objects and quiet human gestures. No faces. No dialogue. Let the analogy do the work. "Human cause and effect" — a hand interacting with something familiar, a moment of care or connection — creates a personal, relatable feel that holds up in short-form and doesn't require a set, a location, or a cast.
We pitched two concepts using AI-generated storyboard visuals, keeping pre-production lean before a dollar was committed to props or production.
The Concepts
Life in Polaroids
"Developing a future"
A hand presses the shutter of a retro Polaroid camera. Three photos drop onto a flat lay in sequence, each developing to reveal a family moment: a parent steadying a child learning to ride a bike; floury hands and a child's baking together; a parent adjusting a grad cap. End line: "Protecting what matters, today and tomorrow."
The insight: every family's story is a work-in-progress, worth protecting. The Polaroid format — tangible, nostalgic, slightly imperfect — stands out in a digital feed and communicates the emotional weight of those moments without sentimentality. The motif works in six seconds and provokes the audience to recall their own memories and future aspirations.
A Little Care
"A little care today can go a long way"
A watering can tends to a small mandarin tree — a symbol of prosperity and abundance in many cultures. An adult hand turns the pot, brushes a leaf. The scene cuts to an overhead flat lay: bright mandarin slices arranged on a kitchen counter, a small child's hand reaching in from the side to take a piece. End line: "A little care today can go a long way."
The insight: caring for what grows today provides for the people who matter most. The mandarin tree carries cultural resonance while staying visually clean and brand-adjacent. Warm, minimal, optimistic — designed to slow the scroll of a fast-moving feed without demanding attention.
Production
Both concepts were designed around the constraints before a single prop was ordered. No professional talent, no location, no production budget to speak of — which meant every creative decision had to double as a production solution.
Hands-Only Casting
Designing both concepts around hands only eliminated the need for talent, casting, waivers, and scheduling — while creating a consistent, intimate visual language across both spots. What started as a budget constraint became the defining aesthetic of the work.
Sourced from Home
The retro Polaroid cameras for Concept 01 were already personally owned. The mandarin tree, watering can, cutting board, dish towels, and kitchen props for Concept 02 came from home. No procurement, no rental, no logistics overhead — and a genuinely lived-in quality that a prop house couldn't replicate.
Real, Not Performed
The child's hand that reaches in to take a mandarin slice is my 18-month-old's. The warmth in that moment isn't something a brief could specify or a casting session could manufacture. In a campaign about protecting the people who matter most, the most authentic element in the spot is the one that cost nothing.
Outcome
Both concepts were approved from the pitch. The assets ran across Meta, YouTube, and Demand Gen as planned — and kept running longer than intended when agency production delays continued past the original stopgap window. There was real skepticism going in about whether the quality would hold at a national campaign level. The YoY performance data answered that.
In a head-to-head comparison against fully produced agency OLVs running in the same period, both in-house spots matched the top-performing agency creative on CTR (0.13%) and came in with lower CPMs — $9.41 and $9.95 respectively, versus $12.43 for the comparable agency spot. Total production cost for both videos: approximately $200.
Tools
Premiere Pro · After Effects · AI storyboarding
Channels
Meta · YouTube · Demand Gen
Collaborators
Michael Jeong (Videographer)