Circle Times Square Campaign

This was one of those projects where the scale was obvious, but the emotional payoff mattered more than the spectacle.

The campaign centered on Circle creators appearing on a Times Square billboard, but the stronger idea was not the billboard itself. It was recognition. Taking people who had built real businesses on the platform and turning them into the face of a major brand moment.

That changed the energy of the work.

Instead of making a campaign about Circle talking about itself, the piece became about Circle putting its customers in the center of the frame. The surprise, the setting, the reactions, the feeling of being pulled into something larger than a standard brand activation. That is where the life was.

I was in the middle of the production and post effort on this one, helping shape a large, cross-functional campaign into something that still felt human on screen. Projects like this can easily become bloated because so many teams have a hand in them. The discipline is protecting the core idea.

For me, that was the interesting part. Big brand moments are only memorable when they feel specific. This one worked because it did. It gave Circle a public celebration, but it also gave the audience something more useful than scale for scale’s sake. It gave them faces, reactions, and a reason to care.

My part in the production

I produced and directed the location shoot and led the day on site. The work involved three permitted Times Square locations, a 20-person crew, three camera operators, and still photography, with local production support for locations and crowd management. This was part of a larger Circle campaign; it was not a standalone launch-film package.

The production problem was protecting genuine reactions in a location we could not stop and reset. Crew assignments, location coordination, and the post handoff all had to support that moment.

Planning a New York shoot?

See New York City production and the Times Square production guide. For a complete founder or product launch film, see startup launch videos; for a crew and producer working with your creative team, see production-only shoots.