Ultimate Software: Here’s to Your Employees

In the HR space, it’s revolutionary to think of employees as distinctly human individuals rather than data that’s pushed around in a spreadsheet.

We were invited by our longtime partners and clients, Ultimate Software, to concept, produce, and deliver a national :30 second broadcast spot that captured the spirit of the brand’s unique humanistic approach.

We helped them create a spot that reflected their brand positioning as the HR platform of choice for organizations that think about their people first and would pull at the altruism of HR decision makers within large organizations.

We started with trying to develop a visual shorthand for the duality of the employee- that they have an official life within the company but have their own unique private life outside of work hours.

We wanted to communicate that the employer had a responsibility to nourish both lives, and that Ultimate Software provided the right solutions for companies that agreed with this principle.

This led us to the basics of our concept:

• MOCO: We would use a motion control unit to film the exact same shot in ten different locations.
• TWO SIDES: We would cast five diverse characters and show them both in a professional setting and a personal, “after-hours” setting that hinted at their rich personal life.
• MATCH CUTS: We would use match cuts to flip seamlessly between these scenes, further reinforcing the idea that this is two sides of the same individual.
• ODE: We would write an anthemic VO script, phrased as an ode to your employees as individuals “who have a lot going on before 9, and after 5.”

We wanted to create a flipbook of single-shot stories. The identical positioning of the people in the center of the frame, as the backgrounds change between personal and professional, reinforces the idea that the same person is at the center of both lives, and that cultivating one side would in turn impact the other.

The seamless continuity of the camera move from character to character and the quick-cut cascade of people at the end of the spot suggests that Ultimate Software can unite employees from wildly different walks of life and focus them towards the common goal of advancing the company.

This spot was Ultimate Software’s national TV campaign for 2018. It played extensively during broadcasts of major PGA golf tournaments, March Madness, other national sporting events, cable news outlets, airport news packages across the globe.

Artex was responsible for conceptualization, scripting, treatment, production, and post-production for this project.

We continue to partner with Ultimate Software, looking for every opportunity to add cinematic vibrancy and emotional resonance to their goal of making Human Resources feel more “human.”