There’s a version of the American success story that’s been repeated so often it’s treated as fact: dream big, climb the corporate ladder, build something massive, or you haven’t really made it.
The people we serve chose a different dream. They dream to forge their own path, build something that matters, and wake up every day doing what they love.
“Dream Small” is our new brand campaign built on one promise:
There’s nothing small about small business
Small business was never the smaller dream
Every day, we work with more than 500,000 business owners who bet on themselves. They opened the shop, started the studio, signed the lease, or hired their first employee.
At Gusto, we think they got it right. Each of those businesses is one person’s vision and a handful of paychecks for people they know by name. Add them up and you get the backbone of the economy.
Small businesses make up 99.9% of all U.S. businesses and account for 43.5% of GDP, according to the SBA, and Gusto Insights data shows new business applications hit a record high this year.
Starting a business has never been easier, but running one is still hard. Payroll, benefits, and HR often feel built for enterprises and handed down. We built Gusto for the other kind of business, where every hire is personal and the owner knows whose rent and mortgage that paycheck covers.
Every small business starts with someone betting on themselves
We set out to build a campaign that would reinforce the choice to run your own business and introduce Gusto as the partner to help you make it easier. So how do you bring the big impact of small business to life when the day-to-day of a business is so personal? By telling a story that shows what’s at stake when someone bets on themselves.
Developed with our creative partner Special US, directed by Nick Ball, and shot by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (Oppenheimer, The Odyssey), our hero film, “The New Big Dream,” was treated with the care and craft of a blockbuster, because a small business story deserves nothing less. It follows Tony, who opens a single dry-cleaning store, his childhood dream, against the advice of nearly everyone around him, including his father who had different plans for his son. Throughout the story, we see Tony grinding in the early days, gathering a community of loyal customers, hiring his first employees, and ultimately building a successful business. In the end, Tony even hires his dad, giving him benefits with Gusto.
The campaign also includes a series of ads featuring other small businesses that capture the nuances and intricacies of running a small business. In each one, Gusto payroll, health insurance plans, and retirement help the business owners care for their teams and get back to doing what they do best.
We also worked with illustrator Marcos Montiel to bring the spirit of our films to life in a series of illustrations featuring small businesses running successfully and breaking out of their own shops and buildings as a way to celebrate the impact small businesses create.
From Sunday football to Penn Station, “Dream Small” is everywhere this fall
The campaign launches today across broadcast, online video, social, audio, influencer, and digital out-of-home. You’ll find it in live sports coverage on CBS, FOX, The CW, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video through Thanksgiving week, and on LinkNYC kiosks, in Penn Station, and in transit shelters across Manhattan and downtown Chicago.
Gusto’s mission is to grow the small business economy with technology and heart
This campaign is a statement about who we are. We bring the kind of technology once reserved for large enterprises to the people who need it most. And we do it with heart, because running a small business is a labor of love, and we take it as personally as our customers do.
More than 500,000 small businesses trust us to care for their business and their team the way they would. Payroll, health benefits, 401(k), HR, and more: everything they need, so they can focus on the thing they set out to do.
If you’ve ever opened a door, flipped a sign, or made a first hire against the advice of everyone you know, this one’s for you.
