Created by Johannesburg, South Africa–based creative agency House of Brave and production company Egg Films condensed a seventeen-year love story into a new :90 spot, titled “One,” for life insurance company 1Life. “The story was engineered,” says House of Brave’s executive creative director Vanessa Pearson, “to prompt viewers to really think about the domino effect that just one simple thing can change a life.” The narration-driven script starts with one look at a social gathering between a woman and a man, then progresses to two cups of coffee, three smiley faces via text, four hours of argumentative silence, five tickles and six days the couple spends apart—all the way to seventeen years and counting. “A lot of the narration was quite specific, but we didn’t want the visuals to be that literal,” says Egg Films’ director Slim. “We tried to avoid obvious, clichéd moments like showing the couple getting married, and we resisted trying to be comedic. We wanted to observe real moments and keep everything as human as possible.”