How small brands can create standout campaigns without a big budget

You don’t necessarily need a huge budget to create a big budget. You need collaboration and a killer idea.

Therabody’s “Add Some Magic” campaign is an example of what that can look like. Its in-house creative team shot an ad in less than four hours. The team then handled post-production internally and moved from shoot to launch in roughly a month.

The ad became the most-watched piece of content in Therabody history.

For smaller organizations, the process is an example that proves money doesn’t always equal impact. Therabody made a limited budget work by collaborating across teams, thinking outside the box and spending time efficiently.

“We spent a modest amount on the production, but we trusted our creative instincts,” said Sara Dickerson, vice president of creative at Therabody. “We were able to move quickly. We didn’t overcomplicate it.”

Here’s what other teams can take from that approach.

1. Find your idea before finding the budget

The campaign aimed to show off a new version of Therabody’s depuffing wand, a skincare device that heats or cools against the skin. The team wanted its audience to understand what it could do without having to list a bunch of product features.

They drew inspiration from a real airport experience.

A male Therabody employee had his wife’s curling wand in his luggage and joked about what might happen if airport security searched his bag and found her beauty products.

The creative team combined that scenario with another trend they saw taking over the internet: 1990s and early 2000s nostalgia.

This led to an ad where a TSA agent comes across the depuffing wand in a suitcase as its being scanned and undergoes a dramatic “Sailor Moon”-inspired transformation after trying it.

Other brands can should start with the one thing they want people to understand about a product, then look for a familiar story, behavior or cultural reference that can show it.

Therabody’s team regularly pulls references from movies, television and other parts of culture, Dickerson said. That gave them a bank of creative references to draw from when the right product came along, which paid off.

“The comment section was full of, like, ‘Oh, my God, Sailor Moon!’” Dickerson said. “And even if the reference didn’t land specifically, I think it was so interesting and so fun that it still was very impactful.”

2. Use what you already have

Therabody didn’t book an airport set specifically for the campaign. The company happened to already be shooting some other travel-related content for another product that day.

So the team piggybacked on it, shooting the commercial at the same time.

That is a model smaller organizations can steal, she said. A conference can become a location for a piece of thought leadership, a customer photo shoot can become a BTS for social media, or an employee interview could generate a long-form story, short videos and internal content.

“Use what you have available to you,” Dickerson said.

Therabody then went to work. Editors started working on the ad the next day and made changes through quick conversations rather than formal revision rounds, she said.

“There’s no ramp-up time. There’s no lengthy briefing process,” Dickerson said.

3. Make trust part of the production process

Over the years, Therabody’s team developed a shared understanding of the brand and earned credibility with leadership.

“We’ve worked together for so long that our leadership really trusts our decisions,” she said.

Brand, media, marketing and executive leadership all weighed in on the ad, but everyone understood the larger boundaries, which allowed decisions to happen faster, she said.

Smaller companies can replicate this without building a large in-house studio. Define who needs to approve what. Give creative teams clear brand principles and decide how much risk is acceptable.

“Give yourself the room to move quickly and take chances,” Dickerson said. “Give your creative team the room to pitch fun, crazy ideas, letting them know that it’s a safe space to be creative and think out of the box, and then trust them to make it happen.”

And don’t be afraid to fail, she added.

“We take a lot of chances with our creative, and not every pitch makes it, right?” Dickerson said. “The cutting room floor is covered and that’s okay.”

4. Bet on creativity

The larger takeaway is that budget constraints can force teams to think outside the box. Dickerson said teams should be asking themselves, “What part of this campaign actually requires money, and what part requires a better process?”

The campaign ultimately generated 3.2 million Instagram views, surpassing previous Therabody campaigns that featured popular brand ambassadors. She said it delivered 58% above the beauty benchmark for return on ad spend and drove 24% of category conversions in March and April. Sales of the Indigo Depuffing Wand rose 60% in the three months following launch.

“A small budget doesn’t mean small impact,” Dickerson said. “You can do something great in a short amount of time with a small budget if you have the right idea and the right people.”