Turning a savings tactic into a testimonial platform
A one-round testimonial built to prove savings became a 17-story, bilingual platform that carries any product benefit, put one spot in the top 1% of industry ads tested, and was still on air two years later, when I left.
- Company
- Spectrum
- Years
- 2025–2026
- Scope
- Brand, national, English and Spanish
- With
- Nomad FC
Context
In 2025, Spectrum was leaning on savings and needed proof people would believe. The idea was generated internally; Nomad FC produced it, with Glenn Martin directing: real customers who had saved by combining Internet and Mobile, telling it themselves. Round 1 cast six of them and aired that fall.
The problem underneath
The project had an idea and a director and needed an owner to get it to air. The concept wasn't mine; getting it to air and turning it into a platform was. Underneath that, the brief was savings, which made it a tactic. The format's real asset was that real people are believed, and belief can carry any benefit the business needs to land.
The system
I moved the second word into a slot. Real Customer. Real Savings. became Real Customers. Real Stories., with the benefit swappable by story and end card: reliability, service, entertainment, savings. Even the first word changed. Round 1 was one person with one story; the plural arrived with the platform.
Around the slot, I built the parts that made it repeatable: a casting brief organized by product need, with Spanish-language considerations under each, so casting answered the roadmap instead of chance; a module of up to nine deliverables per story, broadcast to radio, so every Round 2 story shipped as a set rather than a single spot; and two rules from testing, say the brand three times and never let the customer read as cast. It was judged on awareness and consideration, the job it was built for.
The work
Outcome
17 stories
across two rounds, English and Spanish
Top 1%
of industry ads on Dumbstruck
66% vs. 50%
real-customer believability against a scripted spot
Two years in, the spots were still running across products because the format carries whatever it's handed. When I left, media plans and business needs were shifting and the team had begun scoping the next version: a new shell on the same heart.
What I'd change
Testing told us by Round 2 that the heart worked and the look was where fatigue would come. I'd start the next visual treatment while the first one is still winning, because a two-year format earns a refresh whether or not the numbers say it needs one.
With Nomad FC. Directed by Glenn Martin.