In a market saturated with messages about product features and benefits, how does a brand break through and forge a genuine emotional connection with consumers?

This was the challenge facing VELUX, the undisputed global leader in skylights. While holding over half of the U.S. market share in its category, VELUX aspired to transcend its niche, moving from a functional building product to an aspirational brand that connects on an emotional level with homeowners.

The solution was a campaign called The Great Indoors, born from a deep partnership spanning over two decades between VELUX and Wray Ward. This isn’t just a story about a successful campaign; it’s a testament to how Wray Ward immersed itself in the VELUX brand and business to unearth powerful insights and craft transformative creative work.

The Challenge: Elevating a Category Leader Even Higher

VELUX is a brand with strong recognition in the skylight category but aims to increase its relevance with high-income homeowners and shift from being a practical product to forging an emotional brand connection. The brand set an ambitious goal: to elevate its home improvement brand perception score from 54.4 to 66.0, matching its category perception score and making skylights an essential component of aspirational, emotionally resonant interior design.

The Foundation: A Partnership Built on Deep Knowledge

Wray Ward’s long-standing role as the lead strategic agency of the VELUX North America sales group provided a crucial advantage. This wasn’t a project that started with a simple brief. It was built on years of accumulated knowledge of the VELUX business, its consumers and its installers. Over time, the Wray Ward team has learned how to install skylights, helped influencers understand how skylights can enhance their homes and stepped into installers’ shoes to appreciate the nuances of selling skylights — and that’s just scratching the surface.

This deep immersion fueled our insights team’s foundational strategy work. First, we adapted the VELUX brand ladder for the U.S. market — a framework that formed the backbone of the VELUX brand foundation and all the work developed by its global roster of agencies.

Wray Ward’s Insights team’s immersion in home and building trends, including remodeling behavior, helped reveal a pattern: Homeowners were increasingly trying to bring the outdoors in, using large windows and doors, yet skylights were not part of their consideration set. The ceiling was an “unexplored frontier.”

This insight was rooted in a staggering statistic that we spend on average 90% of our lives indoors. VELUX had tapped into this notable number over five years before, but offered only a functional solution: daylight to synchronize circadian rhythm and fresh air for a healthier interior home.

Wray Ward leveled up this insight by recognizing the emotional impact of so much time within the confines of our homes: People deeply crave a connection to the outdoors. Nature is soothing, whether it’s trees swaying in the breeze, a starry night sky or an expansive vista. So, we posed a simple but powerful question, “What if we bring the outside in?”

This strategic foundation shifted the narrative from the functional benefit of a window to the emotional experience of The Great Indoors.

The Creative Solution: A Story That Fuses Our Love of Home and the Outdoors

Armed with this powerful strategy, our Creative team developed a campaign that told a compelling visual story. The television spot featured stunning vignettes that blurred the lines between indoor and outdoor living. A woman’s hike up a mountain was revealed to be her ascent of a staircase under a bank of skylights. Children playing in a lagoon were actually in a bathroom bathed in natural light. A family camping in a tent gazed at a star-filled sky in what was revealed to be a living room with skylights.