The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2023
Squarespace's 'The Singularity' turns its website logic into an army of Adam Drivers
In its 2023 Super Bowl film Squarespace has Adam Driver realize it makes websites, then multiply until he triggers The Singularity — the ad is the explanation.
Squarespace
What it had to solve
Squarespace's one function is abstract and recursive — a website that makes websites could, in principle, make itself. For its 2023 Super Bowl film the brand had to make that loop understandable and entertaining to an audience that has no reason to care about web tools.
How it works
Squarespace's product loop is nearly philosophical: it is a website that makes websites, so it could, in theory, have built itself. That abstraction is the hardest thing the brand has to sell, and its 2023 Super Bowl film set out to make the loop land as entertainment rather than as a feature list.
In 'The Singularity', Adam Driver is struck by the realization that Squarespace is a website that makes websites. The insight sends him on an epic journey to the fraying edges of reality, where he spawns multiple versions of himself and ultimately triggers The Singularity — the end of physical reality and the beginning of something new. Each additional Driver restates the same insight, so the recursive logic physically multiplies on screen.
D&AD's jury read the film as amplification of a very simple product function — 'funny, epic, grand' — and praised it as the perfect use of digital and craft. The work sits in the D&AD 2023 awards archive; the page records no view or sales numbers, so the case rests on the idea and the craft rather than measured results.
Why it lands
- The loop is shown, not told: every extra Driver physically repeats the insight until the audience cannot miss the product's one function.
- Comedy carries the abstraction: a multiplying celebrity is funnier and more watchable than any diagram of a platform.
- One actor plays both the product and its user, collapsing the brand's relationship with itself into a single joke.
- Escalating to the Singularity gives a mundane web utility an epic stake, which is what earns attention on the year's biggest ad stage.
What it did
The recursion became the film's engine: each spawned Driver re-proves the platform's function without a single feature demo, making the explanation itself the entertainment. D&AD carried the work in its 2023 awards archive, where jurors called it a funny, epic amplification of a very simple product function and 'the perfect use of digital and craft'; the page records no view or sales figures.
What you can take
When a product's idea is recursive, don't simplify it — dramatize it: give the loop a character and let it escalate, so the audience has watched the explanation happen rather than heard it.
Since then
'The Singularity' aired during Super Bowl LVII on 12 February 2023 as Squarespace's ninth Big Game campaign, and the film was watched and discussed as the game's science-fiction outlier. D&AD carried the work in its 2023 awards archive, with jury comments praising the epic, funny execution of the product's one function. Squarespace returned to the same strategy in later years — a big stage film built on a single brand idea — and the recursive self-building joke became a recognizable signature of its advertising.
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