About HaELM

HaELM is an independent studio that takes real advertising apart to show the decisions behind it.

HaELM started with a simple observation: most people can tell you whether an ad worked on them, but not why.

We read advertising through two lenses at once — the consumer lens, noticing what actually lands, and the brand lens, understanding the strategy behind it. HaELM is where we write those readings down: breaking apart real ads, campaign by campaign, to show the psychology and strategy hiding in plain sight.

The name comes from two ideas: the Elaboration Likelihood Model, the psychology of how people process persuasion, and the elm tree — roots, growth, resilience. HaELM decodes ads the way you’d read a root system: patiently, one layer at a time, to understand what’s actually holding everything up.

How we work

• Every Decode uses one fixed format in four parts, so readings can be compared across brands and cities.

• We decode only ads we have seen in person. Photos and footage are our own unless a credit says otherwise.

• We check facts against named sources, and where we infer a brand’s intent, we say so.

• When we get something wrong, we correct it on the page.

• Each Decode is written by the person who stood in front of the ad, so the scene is told in the first person.

What’s next

Marketing updates are coming soon. A section on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) will follow once the Decodes run on a steady schedule.

Contact

For correspondence: hello@ha-elm.com · Instagram · AD CAPTURED