Inez Gray

For years, Seattle's Habitude Salon Spa Gallery (habitude.com), sunk its holiday advertising money in billboards, radio and print advertising. But this year owner Inez Gray felt her money was better spent on a television campaign.

"I thought we could create more of a feeling with TV, and I also wanted to move in this direction so we can take our website and Facebook pages to new levels with video and imagery," she says.

Making It Work: Gray admits she'd been a little intimidated by the filming aspect, until her Customer Service Director Paul Ingram introduced her to photographer Aaron Last who took images from a six-hour photo shoot and spun them into video. "I saw his work and it had exactly the right feeling for what we wanted to communicate-fashion, wellness and beauty in a hip, heartfelt environment."

Music and Lyrics: For the jingle, Gray recruited Chris Marx, her children's piano teacher who'd taken several commercial music classes in college. More importantly, "he is young, enthusiastic and knows me well," says Gray.  "Chris mixed little bits, sent them via e-mail to us, and we tweaked it."

The Concept: "The team developed storyboards for two 30-second spots: In Hair Transformation, a client walks in frumpy and leaves fabulous; in Spa Metamorphosis, the client walks in tired and stressed and leaves blissed out," says Gray.

The Media Buy: Habitude plans to run the campaign, "A Heartfelt Holiday," from November 1 through February 15 to include Valentine's Day, and the commercials will air locally on channels such as TNT, Food Network and Bravo.