Resi had taken out £1 million in equity investment from ITV as part of a media-for-equity deal. The challenge? Following a prior campaign that didn’t hit the mark (not on my watch), the company was understandably reluctant to spend big on a fresh round of creative. That left me with a key question: how do you make an effective, memorable TV campaign with virtually no budget? The answer was to value-engineer every element.

The shoot was managed entirely in-house, I wrote the script, we hired equipment and used no external crews. The concept had to be simple, speak without words, and yet still land hard in people’s memories.

Home extensions have long consideration cycles, so brand presence and salience are everything. I focused on creating a distinctive, repeatable brand asset: first and foremost, a brand mascot called Harry.

Licensing music can be costly, so I dug through public domain archives to find the perfect song. I then hired someone on Fiverr to record a bespoke version for us on the cheap.

In just two weeks, we produced three distinct TV spots. The results? Outstanding.
• Brand awareness jumped by ~5% within London.
• We reached 50% of Londoners, on average, 13 times each over the summer.
• We ran for 112 days, appearing on primetime slots including major events like the election debate between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer—where we cheekily positioned our ad to run first.

This campaign was perfectly timed ahead of a major investment round and ensured Resi was top-of-mind for our target audience. Proof that constraint breeds creativity—and that a zero-budget doesn’t have to mean zero impact.