The Challenge

StatusCake is a website monitoring company that enables developers and website owners to be alerted promptly when a problem is detected and then provides analysis to fix the issue. Alongside these paid services, StatusCake offer free website uptime testing on their community plan, which is no longer offered freely by Pingdom, their main competitors.

To lure more users, StatusCake employed us to raise awareness for these free services. The brief was simple, drive more sign ups to StatusCake’s community plan.

To achieve this, we set out to produce video animated ads to supplement existing Facebook Ad campaigns and for a dedicated YouTube Ad Campaign.

Development

StatusCake offer a professional, technical, but friendly service. Their colours are rich and vibrant to reflect their fun and engaging side of their branding. Social media posts on Twitter and Facebook also follow this tone, utilising humour to engage their followers.

With this in mind, we believed the ads should mirror this side of their branding, and so we began drafting ideas.

There were two main concepts that recurred in the brainstorm, which we decided to test against each other. One ad would focus purely on the light and humorous side, and the other would focus on more informational details, and how the product helps the end user on a day-to-day basis.

One idea that really chimed well in brainstorming was that everyone loves free stuff, it was thought this concept would really resonate with the audience. As this was being explored, we also worked on being able to demonstrate the practicality of the service.

Two scripts were then drawn up for a pair of ads that would illustrate these concepts.

“We love free…”

Everyone loves getting free stuff, and to capture this thought, the phrase ‘free food always tastes better’ was used in the first line of the ad. This also played on the fact that StatusCake has an item of food in the name. The main idea of this particular ad was to engage with the audience in a way that everyone understands, and also to humanise the already personable brand.

Frame 1: “Has anyone ever said to you free food always tastes better?”

Frame 2: “At StatusCake, we like free things”

Frame 3: (examples of free things that appeal) – “free pizza, free drinks, free gifts…”

Frame 4: “Even if you’re a web developer, or run your own business, you love free things”

Frame 5: “That’s why we offer free uptime tests on our community plan”

Frame 6: (offerings on the community plan) “including regular uptime tests and page speed tests as well”

Frame 7: “Sign up for free, for life -”

Frame 8: Logo

This is, we feel, a great way to entice the audience and get them to click through to the website, where more detail about the community plan can be found.

Informational ad

To test against the “we love free…” ad, we took a different approach for this ad in making sure it was clear where the product would be most useful – partly inspired by the “sell me this pen” scene from The Wolf Of Wall Street.

Monday 8am: Website crash
8.15am: Phone ringing; Client ranting; Developer panicking
(REWINDS)
StatusCake in place
Monday 8am: Website crash; Developer notified
8.15am: website fixed; Everyone happy

(same tag and logo finish as first ad)

This version cuts to the chase, you’re thrown in, and it’s relatable. It shows you exactly, and simply, how the product works and, more importantly, why you need it.

Production

After the concepts were approved we developed some storyboards using the basic graphics that would be used in the full ad. These were initially sketched on paper and then produced on Adobe Photoshop and were crucial in visualising the end ad.

All elements of the animation were produced in-house, and were drawn from a combination of the scripts and the branding of StatusCake, using a bright punchy palette and an easy-to-read sans serif font.

Final scripts were written and then recorded in a rough voice over to give timing cues for the animations to run with.

Using Adobe Animate with the assets already produced on Photoshop, the videos were then worked on for two weeks until we had two final drafts of the ads.

The next stage of the production was dedicated to finding an appropriate voice over. We decided that the voice would be clear, friendly, and sincere to further correspond with StatusCake’s appeal and the selling points of the ads.

Once sourced, the heavy editing process of both the audio and visuals took place over the next week, until the final ads were ready . Watch the final ads below!