Global Squirrels & Med Squirrels
The Wise Purple Squirrel
A wise purple squirrel saves a hiring manager from cheap hires.
Watch the full campaign · 1:15
The Strategy
Global Squirrels and Med Squirrels are two staffing platforms from one company. Global Squirrels finds contract workers for any kind of business, on site or overseas. Med Squirrels finds contract clinicians, like nurses, for hospitals and clinics. Both skip the usual agency markup. A company pays the worker's payroll cost plus one flat fee, and that's it.
The people who buy staffing are owners and executives at smaller companies, and HR and procurement teams at bigger ones. Most of them believe they have to choose. Pay a lot and get good people, or pay less and live with whoever shows up. The flat fee is what lets Global and Med Squirrels pay workers well and still send a smaller bill.
Their team gave us the line to build on: you can have it both ways. Top talent, and less spend. They also wanted one campaign that worked for both brands, with each brand running its own version.
The answer came from recruiting slang. A "purple squirrel" is the perfect candidate, the one who is almost impossible to find. So we gave the brands a wise purple squirrel of their own: a glowing spirit with a British voice that only one person can hear.
That person is Jen, a hiring manager whose first hire has gone badly. She stands in a doorway holding a bottle of organic kombucha, watching her new hire fall apart in slow motion. In the Med Squirrels ads he's a nurse in royal blue scrubs, singing into his stethoscope like a rock star. In the Global Squirrels ads he's the new IT guy, punching a computer that isn't plugged in. Then a voice in Jen's head points out that she gave up quality to save money, and she turns to find a squirrel watching her.
The campaign is five ads for each brand. The 15-second teaser is the job interview, held over a video call that goes wrong in a different way for each brand, and the squirrel's first visit. The 30-second main spot is the full disaster, and the squirrel's advice. The 15-second follow-up picks up after Jen has made a better hire. Two 6-second reminders bring back the bad hire and the squirrel. The ads went out in January 2025. Global and Med Squirrels ran their own media.
The Process
We shot all ten ads in one day in October 2024, in an empty office building dressed to look like a hospital. Our production designer painted the walls a bright blue, and we brought in a real hospital bed. Brian, from our team, directed, and Adam, from our team, wrote the scripts.
Both brands share the same room, the same Jen and the same squirrel. Only the hire changes. One actor plays both: royal blue scrubs for Med Squirrels, then a flannel shirt over a binary-code T-shirt for Global Squirrels.
The squirrel is a real stuffed squirrel. On the shot list, it's Randy. We filmed it on set, then turned it purple in editing, made it glow and made it appear and disappear. Its British voice was recorded later.
Brian shot the hire's scenes at 120 frames per second, which plays back five times slower than real life. That gives every gag the slow, glossy look of a big-budget commercial. It also means the actor had to move fast and big, because anything small would play back as almost nothing.
The props are mostly real. The IT guy is wrapped in 150 feet of Ethernet cable. The nurse goes through more than 30 fake tongues. For the teaser's sneeze, we set a sheet of plexiglass in front of the lens to catch it. The IT guy's video call was filmed on a phone, so it looks like a real one. And the squirrel's droppings are two grains of rice.
We delivered all ten ads in 4K, in widescreen, square and vertical, with and without subtitles, plus still portraits of the cast.
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