Historic Royal Palaces is the independent charity that manages and maintains some of the UK’s most iconic royal sites, including Hampton Court Palace, the Tower of London, Kensington Palace and Banqueting House. Their work combines conservation of extraordinary heritage buildings with creating world-class visitor experiences that bring centuries of history to life.

Historic Royal Palaces came to Nutmeg through our friends at Arthur London with a distinctive brief: produce two TV commercials to support their summer campaign, ‘Restoration in Progress’, encouraging audiences to visit the palaces and their gardens.

The campaign was built around a genuinely unusual idea, that these historic spaces offer something rare in modern life: a chance to slow down, reconnect with nature and history, and find calm. The films needed to communicate that restorative quality. The creative challenge was to make a TV commercial that felt nothing like a typical TV commercial. If you’re interested in how brand film and TV commercial production differ, our guide to brand film production covers the distinction in detail.

We filmed across Hampton Court Palace, in the formal gardens, the kitchen gardens, and deep inside the palace itself, including the famous King’s Staircase with its painted baroque ceiling by Antonio Verrio. The combination of the natural world outside and the grandeur of the interiors gave us the full tonal range the campaign needed: the tranquility of the gardens alongside the breath-taking scale of the palace’s historic spaces.

We cast actors and VoiceOver artists for the campaign, handling all casting and fee negotiations in-house, and sourced the locations across Hampton Court during a recce with the client.

The key creative decision was to lead with sound as much as image. We used carefully crafted ASMR sound design, the rustle of leaves, the echo of footsteps on stone, water, birdsong, layered with an original musical score written to create a calming, immersive experience rather than a traditional advertising soundtrack. Every audio choice was made to slow the viewer’s pulse rather than quicken it.

The result was two films that felt genuinely cinematic, quiet, beautiful and unhurried, while still carrying the campaign’s invitation to visit clearly and compellingly.

The two commercials were delivered for digital distribution as part of the ‘Restoration in Progress’ summer campaign, reaching audiences across digital channels and encouraging them to explore the restorative qualities of Historic Royal Palaces’ sites and gardens.

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