Context
This campaign was commissioned by Business Isle of Man, part of the Isle of Man Government Department for Enterprise.
The brief focused on supporting local economic activity during the Christmas period, with freedom to explore how behaviour could be meaningfully influenced.
Through early exploration, we identified a deeper behavioural pattern shaping consumer choice. Screen-led purchasing and online convenience had become the default, largely driven by habit rather than conscious decision-making.
The opportunity was not to restate familiar messaging, but to question the cycle that had normalised digital consumption.
The Strategic Challenge
Online platforms are designed to hold attention, reduce friction, and accelerate decisions. Over time, this shifts behaviour. Purchasing becomes habitual rather than deliberate, particularly within family life where screens increasingly mediate everyday choices.
In this environment, traditional messaging struggles because it competes with behaviour rather than addressing it.
The challenge was to surface the influence of screens and create a moment of interruption without instruction, guilt, or moral pressure.
The aim was reconsideration.
Our Role
We led concept development and carried the work through pre-production, production, and post-production, delivering the finished films for publication and press.
This included narrative development, writing and storyboarding, casting, filming, post-production, and delivery of campaign cuts.
Publication and press distribution were managed through government and Island media channels.
Narrative Approach
The film uses everyday family life to reflect modern consumption behaviour. The pull of screens and online shopping is presented as a constant background presence rather than an explicit antagonist.
The story avoids criticism of technology itself. Instead, it allows audiences to recognise how attention is shaped and how choices are often made by default.
The turning point is small and human. A conscious break from the screen leads back to physical spaces, shared experience, and real-world presence.
The tone is restrained and observational, allowing viewers to reach their own conclusions.
Outcome
The film was featured across every major press outlet on the Isle of Man, supported by government-led publication and amplification.
Beyond reach, it contributed to a wider conversation about screen time, habit, and attention. It reframed everyday purchasing as something that can be considered rather than automated.
Local businesses volunteered their time and spaces to take part, reinforcing the intent of the work through both its production and its message.
Why This Matters
Behaviour rarely changes through instruction alone.
It changes when the forces shaping behaviour become visible.
This project shows how narrative-led film can expose habitual patterns, interrupt automated decision-making, and create space for more deliberate choice.
The work sits between culture, narrative, and marketing, using storytelling to prompt reflection rather than persuasion.
How This Reflects Our Work
We originate ideas and carry them through to execution.
Sometimes the work is structural. Sometimes it is a single, well-placed intervention.
This project shows how film can be used to challenge default behaviour by revealing what has quietly come to dominate attention.