Halifax's That New Home Feel, created by adam&eveDDB in April 2019, uses a toy-led film narrative to dramatise the emotional possibilities of homeownership
Halifax That New Home Feel Brings Emotional Homeownership to UK Screens
Halifax's "That New Home Feel" is a 2019 UK film campaign created by adam&eveDDB that dramatises the excitement and emotional possibility of moving into a new home through the perspective of a toy, positioning Halifax as the brand that makes homeownership happen rather than simply the lender that funds it, according to Celluloidjunkie.
Published in April 2019 in the United Kingdom, the campaign carries a single defining line: "That new home feeling, Halifax makes it happen." The strategic choice is deliberate and significant. Rather than leading with mortgage rates, product features, or financial credentials, the creative anchors itself entirely in an emotional truth — the singular, irreplaceable feeling of crossing a threshold into a home that is newly and completely yours, according to Adsoftheworld. The toy protagonist serves as a surrogate for the human experience, allowing the audience to observe that feeling at a slight remove before recognising it as their own.
The campaign runs as a film medium execution and contains one primary media asset, as documented by Clapboard. Its production was handled by Riff Raff Films, with the work developed within adam&eveDDB's London office under Group Executive Creative Director Ben Tollett and Chief Creative Officer Richard Brim. A cinema activation phase followed in May 2019, deploying the film in a UK ScreenX format across main and side screens at Cineworld venues — a placement secured through a four-week Gold Spot position, a prime 60-second slot running directly before the feature film at all ScreenX screenings, according to reporting documented in the campaign record, according to Mortgagestrategy. Media agency MediaCom managed the cinema placement alongside Digital Cinema Media and Cineworld as partners, according to Cutandrun. The campaign spans the Finance, House, Garden, and Professional Services categories, reflecting the breadth of life change that homeownership represents for UK consumers.
Halifax built the strategic premise of "That New Home Feel" on emotional resonance rather than competitive product claims. The United Kingdom mortgage market in 2019 was notable for its concentration: according to Mortgage Strategy, the six largest UK mortgage lenders increased their combined gross-lending share from 67.6% in 2018 to 70.6% in 2019, indicating a market where differentiation on price and product features was becoming increasingly difficult for any individual lender to sustain. In that environment, emotional positioning offered a more defensible and memorable creative territory.
Halifax is part of Lloyds Banking Group and traces its origins to a building society founded in Halifax, West Yorkshire, in 1853, according to Wikipedia — a heritage that informs a brand posture oriented around the lived experience of homeownership rather than the transactional mechanics of lending. Competitors including Nationwide and Barclays have historically competed in the same emotional and functional space across UK mortgage advertising, making the craft and distinctiveness of any given campaign a meaningful differentiator. Nationwide, operating as the United Kingdom's largest building society, has consistently invested in values-led brand advertising, raising the creative benchmark across the category.
The decision to avoid rate comparisons and instead foreground atmosphere and metaphor reflects a broader strategic lineage at adam&eveDDB. The agency's preceding Halifax work, the 2016 campaign "Extra for everyone" documented by Prolific North, used Fred and Wilma Flintstone to promote current account switching — a campaign similarly built on warmth and cultural shorthand rather than financial argument. "That New Home Feel" extends that instinct into the homeownership journey, meeting consumers at a moment of peak emotional investment and associating the Halifax brand with possibility rather than process.
The creative execution of "That New Home Feel" centres on a single compelling device: a toy moving into a new house, used to externalise and render visible the interior emotional experience of homeownership. The toy perspective introduces a quality of wonder and discovery — spaces that would read as ordinary from an adult human viewpoint become vast and full of potential when observed at miniature scale, which maps precisely onto the emotional state of a first-time or new homeowner encountering a property as their own for the first time.
Direction was handled through Riff Raff Films, as documented across the campaign's production credits. The creative team within adam&eveDDB's London office included Copywriter Ben Stilitz and Art Director Colin Booth, working under Group Executive Creative Director Ben Tollett and Chief Creative Officer Richard Brim. Agency Producer Hannah Needham oversaw production, with planning led by John Blight and Henry Kozak. Designer and typographer Oliver Watts contributed to the visual identity of the work. The client side was represented by Richard Warren, Tim Male, and Jen Jordan at Halifax.
The film's deployment in UK ScreenX format — extending the image across the main screen and both side screens inside the cinema auditorium — was not incidental. The immersive, wraparound environment of ScreenX amplifies atmospheric storytelling in a way that a standard single-screen presentation cannot match. Placing an emotion-led, visually expansive film about the feeling of moving into a new home inside a format that itself creates a sense of enveloping, expansive space is a deliberate alignment of medium and message. The Gold Spot position, running for 60 seconds immediately before the feature at Cineworld's ScreenX screenings in the United Kingdom, ensured the film reached audiences in a state of maximum attentiveness and low advertising resistance, as noted in the campaign record. Clapboard's editorial assessment rates the campaign 63 out of 100, recognising its symbolic, emotion-led storytelling through atmosphere and metaphor.
No independently verified third-party performance data for "That New Home Feel" — such as brand uplift figures, recall scores, or mortgage enquiry attribution — is publicly available at the time of this analysis. What the campaign record does establish, as documented by Clapboard, is that the work was archived and assessed within a competitive creative intelligence context, receiving a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 for its use of symbolic, emotion-led storytelling built on atmosphere and metaphor.
Structurally, the campaign demonstrates several attributes associated with effective financial services advertising in the United Kingdom. The choice to anchor the creative in a universal emotional truth — the feeling of a new home — rather than a transactional product claim extends the campaign's relevance beyond active mortgage seekers to the broader population of aspirational homeowners. The ScreenX cinema deployment, secured through MediaCom and Digital Cinema Media in partnership with Cineworld across a four-week window, placed the film in front of audiences whose attention and emotional openness are measurably higher than in broadcast or digital environments. The Gold Spot placement — 60 seconds immediately before the feature film — is a premium, low-clutter position that reinforces the campaign's premium emotional intent. The alignment of an immersive cinematic format with content built around atmosphere and perspective represents a considered and coherent media-creative integration that strengthens the probability of the emotional message landing with durable impact across the UK market.
Halifax's "That New Home Feel" is a 2019 UK film campaign created by adam&eveDDB that uses a toy moving into a new house to dramatise the emotional experience of homeownership. The campaign line is "That new home feeling, Halifax makes it happen," positioning Halifax around emotional possibility rather than mortgage product features.
Adam&eveDDB London created "That New Home Feel" for Halifax. Group Executive Creative Director Ben Tollett and Chief Creative Officer Richard Brim led the creative work, with Copywriter Ben Stilitz and Art Director Colin Booth as the core creative team. Production was handled by Riff Raff Films, and MediaCom managed UK media placement.
The campaign was published in the United Kingdom in April 2019. A cinema activation phase followed in May 2019, running for four weeks in the UK ScreenX format at Cineworld venues, using a premium Gold Spot 60-second placement directly before the feature film, managed through MediaCom and Digital Cinema Media.
Clapboard rates "That New Home Feel" 63 out of 100. The editorial assessment recognises the campaign's symbolic, emotion-led storytelling approach, built on atmosphere and metaphor rather than direct product communication, as the defining creative characteristic of this Halifax finance and homeownership campaign from 2019.
Halifax's preceding comparable campaign, "Extra for everyone," launched in June 2016 by adam&eveDDB and documented by Prolific North, used Fred and Wilma Flintstone to promote current account switching through warmth and cultural familiarity. "That New Home Feel" continues that emotionally led tradition, shifting the focus from banking products to the lived experience of homeownership in the United Kingdom.
Halifax deployed "That New Home Feel" in UK ScreenX format because the wraparound, multi-screen environment amplifies atmospheric and perspective-driven storytelling. The format extended the film across the main and both side screens at Cineworld venues, aligning the immersive cinematic space with the campaign's central creative device of scale, wonder, and emotional expansiveness around homeownership.
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