HR company Deel recreates ‘This Is Fine’ meme in fiery new ad

Web comic artist KC Green’s “This Is Fine” meme, which is over a decade old now, has had remarkable staying power—and it returns yet again in a new commercial for HR company Deel.

Taking the place of the dog from the comic is an HR manager who’s juggling frantic tasks involving onboarding, payments and more. As his stress level rises, the flames get higher. “This is fine,” he says at every turn—though clearly it’s not.

The spot was created by Brooklyn-based agency Loop. Green was compensated and shared rights to usage.

Tyler Bradley, associate creative director at Deel, told Ad Age it was a little daunting to recreate the meme, but that the concept fit perfectly.

“Recreating anything internet-related always feels a bit ominous. Especially today, with one quick doomscroll, you’ll probably encounter backlash about yet another beloved animated movie getting the live-action treatment,” he said. “Going into production, we wanted to stay true to the original while creating a fresh, captivating, high-tension visual. We contemplated staying true to specifics, like the tiny bowler hat, but it felt too gimmicky and distracting.”

They also thought about putting prosthetics on the actor to make him more doglike.

“After exploring it a bit more, we decided against it,” Bradley said. “It would have probably stayed with viewers in more of a nightmarish way. Since we wanted to preserve the original meme’s integrity, we looked for similarities between the dog and the actor. Honestly, once we got the tape of Jed, it was a no-brainer.”

The fire itself was added in post. To give the impression of heat, the team was constantly misting the actor with water to create a sweat effect. The shoot took one day, with a week of prep beforehand building out the set—including the empty picture frame on the back wall, also a reference to the meme.

“You see a lot of memes with a short lifespan, usually because they’re tied to something specific or part of a fleeting cultural moment,” Bradley said. “The beauty of ‘This is Fine’ is the adaptability of its vagueness and irony. It’s applicable to lots of life, work and cultural situations. It’s evergreen.”

“Nobody is running around raving about their payroll provider, but I own a business and know firsthand how many problems a good HR platform can solve,” added Nick Gallo, Loop’s founder. “Creatively, we saw a unique opportunity to represent the benefits of Deel by utilizing the iconic meme. Everyone has sent, received or just felt seen by this meme at some point in their HR journey, so we wanted to use it to highlight the use-case for Deel in a fun and relatable way.”