Hometree's 'The Field Family Mice' TV advert, created by SNAP LDN in 2018, introduced the UK home cover brand through a stop-motion narrative produced by Nexus
Hometree Sends Stop-Motion Mice Into the Heart of UK Home Cover
Hometree's 'The Field Family Mice' is a stop-motion television advertisement created by SNAP LDN and released in the United Kingdom in September 2018, marking the brand's first above-the-line campaign and using a family of animated mice navigating household emergencies to make home cover feel emotionally resonant rather than transactional.
Hometree launched 'The Field Family Mice' as its debut television campaign in September 2018. Founded in 2015 by CEO and co-founder Simon Phelan, as documented by Hometree's own corporate records, the brand had by that point built a digital-first presence in the United Kingdom's home emergency and boiler cover market. The move into above-the-line advertising represented a significant step change in ambition. Rather than defaulting to the reassurance-heavy visuals that dominate competitor advertising in the category, Hometree and SNAP LDN chose stop-motion animation and a narrative-driven structure to introduce the brand to a broader UK audience.
The creative premise centres on the Field Family — a family of mice living inside a domestic home — who encounter the kind of everyday emergencies that Hometree exists to resolve. The approach is deliberate. By anthropomorphising the experience of home ownership through small, relatable characters, the campaign sidesteps the anxiety that typically accompanies conversations about boiler breakdowns and plumbing failures. The result is a TV advert that feels closer to craft animation than to conventional insurance or professional services advertising. Produced by Nexus Studios and directed by Jack Cunningham, as listed on IMDb, the film brings a level of production ambition rarely associated with a challenger brand at this stage of growth. The campaign contains one media asset and was categorised within the professional services sector, operating squarely within the competitive and crowded UK home emergency market.
British Gas held the dominant position in the UK home emergency and boiler cover market in 2018. According to Clapboard's editorial research, British Gas, Aviva, and HomeServe were identified as the significant incumbent providers, creating a landscape in which challenger brands needed differentiated positioning to gain consumer attention. Hometree, as a younger entrant founded in 2015, faced the challenge of establishing trust and emotional salience in a category where incumbents trade heavily on heritage and scale.
The strategic logic behind 'The Field Family Mice' reflects a wider shift in how challenger brands in the United Kingdom approach category entry. Rather than competing on product feature messaging — price comparisons, response times, coverage breadth — SNAP LDN constructed a campaign around narrative and character. This is a meaningful distinction. Home emergency cover is, by nature, an anxiety-adjacent product; consumers engage with it only when something has gone wrong. Advertising that leads with fear or inconvenience can reinforce the category's negative associations. The Field Family Mice inverts that dynamic by leading with warmth and wit, positioning Hometree as a brand that understands domestic life rather than one that simply responds to its failures.
The broader market context supports the timing of this investment. According to OpenPR, UK home emergency and home-services gross written premiums grew by six point six percent in 2018 versus 2017, indicating a category in active expansion. Across ten European countries, Finaccord estimated the home emergency and assistance market at nearly four billion euros in 2017, with further growth forecast through 2021, according to the same OpenPR data. In the United Kingdom specifically, this growth trajectory made 2018 a credible moment for a challenger brand to invest in brand-building television advertising for the first time. The campaign's narrative construction signals that Hometree understood the importance of emotional differentiation as much as market timing.
Nexus Studios produced 'The Field Family Mice' for Hometree. The choice of production company is itself a creative statement. Nexus Studios is internationally recognised for animation work of significant craft ambition, and their involvement signalled that this was not a cost-efficiency exercise but a deliberate investment in visual quality. Director Jack Cunningham led the production, as listed by IMDb, bringing a sensibility that prioritises tactile detail and character expressiveness over digital polish.
The stop-motion medium is central to the campaign's emotional register. Physical model-making creates a warmth that CGI animation rarely replicates, and for a home cover brand, that warmth is strategically important. Model making was led by Arch Model Studio and Andy Gent, while set design was handled by Laurie Rollit — credits documented in Clapboard's production records. The domestic environments constructed for the Field Family are miniature but meticulous, creating spaces that feel genuinely lived-in rather than staged. Animation was executed by Felix Massie and Michael Firkowski, whose frame-by-frame work gives the mice characters a physicality and weight that anchors the story emotionally.
Production notes referenced in Nexus Studios' own documentation connect the filmmakers to projects of considerable pedigree, with creative associations to stop-motion works of international standing. On the sound side, music supervision was handled by Soho Music, and sound design was delivered by Alex Wilson-Thame and Ben Leeves at Jungle — credits listed in Clapboard's records for the campaign. The combination of tactile model work, considered set design, and layered sound construction positions 'The Field Family Mice' as a piece of craft advertising that operates at a level above the category norm. Creative direction was led by David Beattie at SNAP LDN, with production managed by producer Jo Bierton and TV producers Catherine Long and Vanessa Butcher, all as documented in Clapboard's production credits for the campaign.
No verified performance data for 'The Field Family Mice' is publicly available. No media spend figures, reach metrics, brand uplift studies, or direct response results have been disclosed by Hometree or SNAP LDN in any publicly retrievable source. Analysis must therefore address structural effectiveness rather than measured outcomes.
The campaign earns a Clapboard Score of 76 out of 100, reflecting strong creative craft and a clear strategic rationale that is somewhat constrained by its status as a single-asset campaign with limited documented deployment breadth. The score recognises the production quality delivered by Nexus Studios, the strength of the narrative mechanism, and the category differentiation the campaign achieves relative to incumbent advertising from British Gas and HomeServe.
Structurally, the campaign performs well on several dimensions relevant to brand-building in the United Kingdom. The stop-motion format creates high distinctiveness in a category dominated by live-action formats. The use of character-driven narrative rather than testimonial or demonstration advertising builds brand memory structures that tend to have longer-term recall advantages, as established in marketing effectiveness literature. The choice to launch Hometree's above-the-line presence with a TV advert of this production calibre also signals brand confidence to both consumers and trade audiences in the UK market. As a first television campaign for a challenger brand founded only three years prior, 'The Field Family Mice' demonstrates a level of creative ambition that exceeds what the category typically demands at this stage of brand development.
'The Field Family Mice' is Hometree's debut television campaign, produced in stop-motion by Nexus Studios and created by SNAP LDN. Released in the United Kingdom in September 2018, it follows a family of animated mice living inside a home and encountering the everyday emergencies that Hometree's cover products are designed to resolve.
Jack Cunningham directed the campaign, as listed on IMDb. Nexus Studios served as production company, with Jo Bierton as producer. Model making was led by Andy Gent and Arch Model Studio, animation by Felix Massie and Michael Firkowski, and creative direction by David Beattie at SNAP LDN, according to Clapboard's production records.
Stop-motion animation creates tactile warmth that differentiates Hometree from competitors relying on live-action formats. In a category where advertising often foregrounds anxiety about domestic failures, the craft medium and character-driven narrative reframe the brand as approachable, positioning Hometree distinctively against established UK providers including British Gas and HomeServe.
UK home emergency and home-services gross written premiums grew six point six percent in 2018 versus 2017, according to OpenPR. British Gas led the market, with Aviva and HomeServe as significant challengers, as documented in Clapboard's market research. This expanding competitive landscape made brand differentiation a strategic priority for challenger entrants like Hometree.
The Field Family Mice received a Clapboard Score of 76 out of 100. The score reflects strong production craft, clear narrative strategy, and meaningful category differentiation, balanced against the campaign's single-asset format and limited publicly documented deployment scale across the United Kingdom market.
The Field Family Mice was Hometree's first above-the-line and first television campaign, launched in September 2018, three years after the brand was founded by Simon Phelan in 2015, according to Hometree's corporate documentation. No earlier named Hometree advertising campaign has been identified in any publicly available or retrieved source.
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