Hornbach films a life in one-square-meter rooms — Cannes Film Craft Grand Prix 2024

Rents were rising and apartments shrinking across Europe, and DIY retailer HORNBACH, known for big ambitious projects, risked losing customers who no longer felt they had room for them. The task was to prove that even the most defining small space of the era — one square meter — could hold grand ideas.

Reframe the shrinking square meter as a canvas: a film shot in real one-square-meter rooms proves even the smallest space can hold the best ideas.

HeimatTBWA built a house of one-square-meter rooms as practical sets — no special effects — where a man wakes, eats, works and plays vertically; Steve Rogers directed and Steven Jones-Evan designed the sets. Around the film, designers and artists from eight European countries made actual one-square-meter artworks, with their stories told across social and digital channels.

The film won the Film Craft Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2024, plus two Gold Lions and a Silver in the same category, and a Gerety Grand Prix for production design. TBWA reported +8% unaided brand awareness, +9% brand evaluation and 4.1% brand preference — first place in the DIY sector.

As rents climbed and European apartments shrank, DIY retailer HORNBACH faced a strange problem: its brand was built on big, ambitious projects, but fewer customers felt they had room for them. With HeimatTBWA Berlin it reframed the era's defining symbol of the housing crisis — the square meter — as a canvas for creativity, under the tagline 'Every square meter deserves to be the best in the world.'

The centerpiece was a 60-second film showing a man living his whole life vertically inside rooms of exactly one square meter: he wakes, dresses, eats in a restaurant where diners sit above him, and finds room for leisure — all built as real, hand-made sets with no special effects, directed by Steve Rogers with production design by Steven Jones-Evan.

Around the film, designers and artists from eight European countries — including Germany, Austria, Sweden, Slovakia and the Netherlands — built actual one-square-meter artworks, and their stories were told across social and digital channels, turning a TV spot into a pan-European conversation.

The craft paid off: Cannes Lions 2024 gave the campaign the Film Craft Grand Prix plus two Gold Lions and a Silver in the same category, and the Gerety Awards gave it a Grand Prix for production design. HORNBACH measured +8% unaided brand awareness, +9% brand evaluation and 4.1% brand preference — first place in the DIY sector.

Making the customer's limitation — the shrinking home — the star of the film turned an obstacle into the message.

Building real one-meter sets instead of using effects made the craft itself the proof that small spaces can hold big ideas.

The eight-country square-meter art program extended one film into a movement with local, shareable stories.

It answered a strategic threat directly: if customers felt too space-poor for DIY, the brand's whole premise was at risk.

Take the customer's constraint — a shrinking home — and make it the creative canvas instead of the obstacle; proving the brand's promise inside the limitation beats claiming it.

The Square Meter became one of the most-awarded campaigns of 2024, recognized by Cannes Lions, the Gerety Awards, ADC Europe and the Epica Awards, and it was covered across the trade press as an example of craft-led strategy in a cost-of-living era. HORNBACH reported stronger brand metrics in the campaign period, and HeimatTBWA's approach — treating the audience's real constraint as the creative canvas — was cited in agency retrospectives as a template for home-improvement marketing.