When he joined, Lee oversaw just a few other designers and “was designing things myself,” he recalled. “We had done some marketing, but not anything at any grand scale.”
In his first year on the job, Lee decided to develop the startup’s first brand campaign. “I wanted to set the bar a bit higher,” he recalled. His team shot the low-budget campaign themselves, and then “we were off to the races.”
It was around that time that Lee was also inspired to build an in-house creative agency. “We’re a DIY product—it’s in our DNA—so it makes sense for us to DIY almost everything we do,” he said.
“Early on it became apparent that Squarespace was a creative and design-led company—we care about the craft, how our product feels, how people use it,” he continued. “We wanted to do the same thing for our brand.”
A ‘DIY’ agency
For the past eight years, Squarespace hasn’t used an external agency. Its in-house operation now employs about 65 people, including creatives, designers, photographers, editors and producers.
“In some ways [the team] is set up like a traditional agency, and in some ways it’s much different,” Lee said.
One difference is that in its New York office, it has an in-house studio where many of its films are directed. The creators shoot about 90% of content themselves, Lee said.
Having this talent in-house means “the speed with which we can greenlight an idea, put it into production and put it out in the world would make most agencies crumble,” he contended.
From lo-fi to worldwide
From those early, low-budget campaigns, Squarespace has graduated into becoming a fixture on advertising’s largest stage: the Super Bowl.
Under Lee’s supervision, Squarespace has now produced nine Super Bowl ads. This year’s spot was a surreal satire featuring actor Adam Driver, while 2022’s outing was a sea-themed tongue twister starring Zendaya.
