ZenBusiness offers the tools entrepreneurs need to start, run, and grow their own businesses. As such, they are a vendor for the very first purchase most professionals will make for their business (the LLC) and continue to remain involved long after, providing what business owners need as they continue to grow their enterprises. As such, this work is not only relevant for the B2B category, it’s key to growing and sustaining the category itself.

2022 was a year like no other for America’s employees. Mass tech layoffs disrupted lives. . The Great Resignation had given way to Quiet Quitting, a symptom of an uninspired workforce. And the stress of the pandemic made people question how they spent their time – and why it was being spent working on someone else’s dream.

ZenBusiness saw their moment to speak to culture, and was ready to show another path forward. ZenBusiness is a tech platform that helps anybody launch, run, and grow their own business. During this unique moment in history, it was uniquely positioned to help people exit the rat race of working for somebody else so they can create a business they’re actually passionate about and start to love what they do.

Why spend your life working to build someone else’s dream? Or staying late for someone else’s profits? Most people hate their jobs, but few realize they can leave that all behind by starting their own business. This bold, brash film for ZenBusiness - a company that helps small business start up - is a middle finger to the corporate system, shaking people from the monotony of working for somebody else. Created with directors Bradley & Pablo, who are best known for their work on top-40 music videos, the film is set to ‘Seize the Power’ by Yonaka - a song whose spirited lyrics embody the ethos of the campaign. The work is made even more powerful through purposefully stereotype-defying casting, hero-ing a young Asian woman in the central role and filling her with the full joy and fury of an Uprising that won’t be stopped.

Our strategy was to inspire our target audience – latent entrepreneurs – to take the leap with ZenBusiness by asking tough questions that would get them thinking, and put them on the path to starting their own business. Our objectives were to help people push past self-doubt, to inspire them to own the moment of decision, and to reassure them to take the leap into entrepreneurship with a plan. We wanted to push people to question the 9-5 system they're stuck in, while seeding the thought that they could break free & experience something better. We went right for the emotional jugular, dramatizing the moment someone discovers and claims freedom from their corporate prison, and inspiring the same for our audience. Our goal was to create something visceral & powerful that echoed the emotions & desires of our target.

We crafted a music video-like film built from our core track. “They're not brave like you, they're too scared to do // Anything that's different, anything that's new” snarl the lyrics as our character smashes an office to bits - accomplished with nearly fully practical effects.

Our hero was cast as a young Asian woman, a choice near and dear to many members of our agency team who said they saw themselves in this work for the first time.

We targeted people with messages at moments they would be thinking about quitting, infiltrating work days at every touch point, from the elevator ride up to the office to cafes and restaurants where they got coffee and lunch, to urinals at popular bars in downtown office areas. OOH, Digital OOH, Social. The message was clear: stop working for someone else’s dreams so you can start a business and Own What’s Yours.

Our “Own What’s Yours” campaign was released in two markets: Boston and Austin. In just our first month across these markets, we garnered 78.44MM impressions total – a huge accomplishment considering we had a combined media spend of only $881k for both the Boston and Austin markets. Additionally, we completely smashed our objective of getting people to visit the ZenBusiness website in pursuit of an LLC. Once again, in just our first month since launch, we achieved an average of 170% increase in sessions to site across both markets. Overall, our campaign succeeded in our key objective of inspiring people to stop working for someone else’s dreams in order to start their own business.

How we work is changing. From hybrid work to quiet quitting to the great resignation and mass tech layoffs, the last few years have been a time of employees and employers trying to work out how they work with each other. ZenBusiness, a tech platform that helps people start, run, and grow their own business, proposes a different solution. What if instead of trying to mend the broken relationship with employers - where even in the best of scenarios you’ll be working to build someone else’s dream - employees can be empowered to quit those jobs and start businesses of their own? This historic moment of upheaval provides a backdrop for a message that’s more salient now than it’s ever been before.