Share to Buy is the UK's leading property portal for affordable homeownership — helping first-time buyers navigate shared ownership schemes, find properties, and take their first step onto the property ladder.

The Moment You Realise was an evergreen social campaign built to run recursively across the year, capturing the emotional turning point when a prospective buyer realises that homeownership is actually within reach. I was responsible for all asset production — sourcing and selecting stock footage, building and animating motion graphic templates in After Effects, adapting brand elements from the Share to Buy guidelines, and delivering a complete, format-complete asset library across every active social channel.

The Brief

The campaign needed to work on two levels. Emotionally, it had to land the moment of realisation — the shift from "I can't afford this" to "actually, I can." Practically, it had to be modular enough to redeploy across multiple campaign windows without looking recycled, and flexible enough to fit every format across LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Stories, and Reels.

The creative toolkit was Share to Buy's existing brand guidelines — I wasn't starting from scratch, but working within an established visual identity and finding ways to animate and apply it across a range of formats and contexts.

The Challenge

Volume and variation.

Six stock footage selections. Two distinct visual styles. Five delivery formats — feed posts, stories, reels, and platform-specific crops for both LinkedIn and Facebook/Instagram. Multiplied out, that's a significant asset matrix to manage without errors or inconsistency.

Staying on-brand across motion.

Translating static brand guidelines into animated assets requires judgement — how brand elements move, layer, and sequence isn't specified in a guidelines document. Both motion styles had to feel like they belonged to the same brand while being visually distinct from each other.

An airtight production system.

With this many iterations — and amends coming in at multiple points across the production process — file organisation, naming conventions, and folder structure weren't administrative details. They were what made the project deliverable without rework snowballing.

The Process

1

Stock Footage Research & Selection

The campaign led with real human moments rather than property photography — the emotional hook came before the product. I sourced and curated stock footage across six hero scenes, selecting for authentic emotional resonance, visual quality, and compatibility with the brand's colour palette and tone. Still frames were also pulled from each for use in static format variants.

2

Motion Graphics — Two Visual Styles

Each video followed the same structure: stock footage as the base layer, text overlay delivering the campaign line, brand pattern elements animated and sequenced on top, and a fully animated end card appended to close.

The two visual styles applied this structure differently:

Style A — Light & Fade.

A lighter treatment with transparency, soft fade transitions, and a more open, airy feel. Brand pattern elements were used at reduced opacity, layered subtly over the footage rather than competing with it.

Style B — Bold & Typewriter.

A blockier, darker application with harder cuts and a typewriter text effect. Brand assets used with more weight and contrast. Higher energy, more direct.

Both were built as After Effects templates — meaning amends to copy, timing, or brand elements could be applied across all format variants without rebuilding from scratch.

3

Format Adaptation

Each of the six motion graphics was adapted across five formats:

Instagram/Facebook feed (1:1)

Instagram/Facebook Stories (9:16)

Reels (9:16)

LinkedIn feed (1:1 and 1.91:1)

Static variants were produced alongside each motion asset using still frames from the footage with the same typographic and brand element treatment.

Beyond the individual asset formats, I also produced a full suite of carousel variants — which added significant complexity to the matrix. Each carousel combined assets in different configurations designed to give the social team maximum flexibility for packaging:

All-motion carousel

Every video asset sequenced as a slideshow with fade transitions and micro-graphic connective elements tying the slides together

Static carousel with animated end card

Static slides leading into the motion end card for a hybrid treatment

All-static carousel

The same structure using still frames

Separated motion assets with end card

Each video isolated with the animated end card as a standalone slide, allowing the social team to build custom combinations for ads

This separation of components was deliberate. Rather than pre-packaging everything into fixed formats, the library was structured so the social and paid media teams could combine assets in whatever configuration suited a given placement, audience, or objective.

4

Production Organisation

With 30+ assets across two styles and five formats — and amends required at multiple stages — file management was the invisible infrastructure that kept everything on track.

I built a folder and naming system that made every asset immediately locatable: structured by footage reference, style, format, and version. This meant amends could be isolated and applied cleanly, and the final handover was organised well enough that the social team could find and deploy assets without needing to come back with questions.

The Outcome

The campaign ran across multiple windows in 2022 and 2023, timed to periods of lower organic search demand — when search interest in shared ownership dropped from peak, paid and social activity picked up the gap.

December 2023 results, year on year: