Hey now, hey now—don’t dream it’s over.

Freud once said, “The dream is the liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature.” For those in accounting, the tedium of endless excel spreadsheets and mind-numbing number crunching is the pressure of external nature. The dream is that of, well, being done.

Host Analytics (known these days as Planful) saw a way to cut through sprawling spreadsheets with an easy-to-use, and quick-to-“done” cloud-based solution aimed at c-level professionals and small-to-medium sized businesses.

Do what you love.

Our job? Show what the “make more time for what really matters” really means for accountants—the dream of being done and doing something they love, whether that means golf, spending time with loved ones, or treating themselves to a relaxing spa day.

The genesis.

We knew that we wanted to show the “better tomorrow” while contrasting it with the harsh realities of life stuck in Excel hell, and what better way to do it than with the daydreams of our audience. Although the original brainstorm started with an idea of work interrupting their leisure lives in reality, a switch to dreams versus reality made for a fun twist—like a man about to make the final putt on the green, only to be interrupted by the sound of a vacuum. Thus, he’s jarred into the sad reality of a late night at the office, where an overbearing janitor is his only true companion.

Three better dreams. Three harsh realities.

Three pre-roll ads were created to show the different leisure time dreams, making sure they resonated with the entire audience—no matter what their “done” looks like.