Making a will is one of life’s more daunting (but necessary) tasks. ELM Legal Services wanted to promote their affordable, complication-free will-writing service to people who still hadn’t quite got round to doing it yet.

Along with the time and the hassle, a big hindrance to the act of will-writing is simply that people don’t like to be reminded of their own mortality. There’s an element of superstition at play here that the team at ELM wanted to dispel.

The message was simple: Making a will is quick, cheap and will not impress too much on your time here on Earth. Essentially it’s “Making a will without the drama”.

In 2021 I wrote a series of lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek ads that parodied various TV, stage and film dramas, from Game of Thrones to Romeo & Juliet. It was so much fun to do, and I was really pleased with how they turned out. So were the team at ELM. The four ads ran for two years on radio across the south of England and Wales. Then in 2023, I wrote four more ads, this time parodying Oppenheimer-style biopics, police procedurals, and Scandi-noir mysteries.

Since these campaigns began, ELM Legal have expanded to new offices in the heart of Bristol, and are advertising all over England and Wales, with the concept also appearing on buses, billboards and social media.