The Brief

Some campaigns arrive with a bang. This one came in like a leaf through a window.

Heartstopper Season 3 wasn’t interested in shouting. It was about that soft, slow ache you get when everything changes but one person stays.

Our job was to put all of that into a single line.

Heartstopper Season 3 shifts gears emotionally. It’s more complex, more vulnerable, and grounded in themes of change, communication, growing pains, and emotional honesty.

I worked alongside my brilliant colleague. We curled up in a meeting room with tea, snacks, and early access to the episodes. We watched the whole season months before anyone else.

We didn’t talk about taglines. We talked about people.

We watched Nick and Charlie stumble, stay, and grow up, silently. By the last, we knew this season didn’t need big words.

It needed some very honest ones.

Everything after that was about tone, not slogans or sparkle. We needed something that would land with the same quiet weight as the season itself.

This tagline will sit alongside key art featuring Nick and Charlie physically closer than ever before, a visual symbol of the intimacy and connection the season explores. The setting is autumn. The tone is heavier. The fans are ready to feel everything. We explored multiple directions, from poetic and thematic to fun and fan-first.

It was a rough, vulnerable, heavier season, so we did our research and got cracking. All copy had to feel true to the show’s heart: tender, emotionally intelligent, queer, real.

Research & Context

The Audience

• Deeply invested, emotionally literate, and fandom-fluent Gen Z and young millennial viewers.

• Heavy overlap with Tumblr, TikTok, AO3 and booktok culture.

• Values authenticity, softness, vulnerability, and joyful queer representation.

• Will analyse every word, beat, and comma for meaning.

• Doesn’t respond well to slogans that sound manufactured or overly commercial.

The Tone of the Series (and comics)

• Honest, delicate, and deeply intimate.

• Moments of sweetness layered over real emotional tension.

• Quiet, ordinary moments made cinematic.

• Emphasis on personal growth, communication, consent, mental health, queer joy, and the complexity of love.

• Visually soft, emotionally sharp.

Key Themes for S3

• Emotional intensity

• Physical and emotional intimacy

• The pain and joy of growing up

• Self-discovery

• Honesty and fear

• Holding each other through change

• Seasonal metaphors: change, letting go, holding on

• The fragility and power of first love

Visual Direction

• Set in autumn. The colour palette is warmer but more subdued.

• Key art features Nick and Charlie closer than ever before.

• It’s not about fireworks. It’s about gravity.

Strategic Objectives for the Tagline

• Must speak to the emotional tone of the season.

• Should pair perfectly with imagery of closeness, softness, and intimacy.

• Needs to resonate deeply with fans without sounding generic or overly brand-y.

• Ideally includes a wordplay or metaphor around “fall,” intimacy, vulnerability, or emotional growth.

• Should be short enough to sit cleanly on key art, subtitles, social, and screen formats.

Tagline Style Examples

• Fall in love this autumn.

• Everything’s changing. Except this.

• It’s love. It’s work.

• New season. Old feelings.

• Let go. Fall in.

• Change hurts. Love helps.

• Falling hurts.

• A new season. A new kind of love.

• Seasons change. So do we.

• This is the season everything shifts.

• Feel, forgive, fall. Repeat.

• The Season of change.

• New season. Same heart.

• Fall apart. Fall together.

• The closer we get, the harder it feels.

• They fall. They break. They stay.

• Still here. Still holding on.

• Falling again. But not alone this time.

• Love’s not light. But it’s worth the weight.

• Change hurts. Love stays.

• Soft love. Sharp edges.

• Brave is being seen. Even like this.

• Autumn strips everything back.

• Out of the woods. Into each other.

• Love, actually.

• Let the light in.

• Love is getting realer.

• It’s still them. Just more complicated now.

• They got closer. And everything got harder.

• The closer they get, the harder it is to hide.

• Closer than ever.

• Love. Even when it’s hard.

• Some things are worth falling for.

• It was never just a crush.

• Intimacy looks like this.

• Hold tight. Let go.

• Love grows here.

• Not all firsts are easy.

• Softer doesn’t mean weaker.

• Everything’s a little heavier this time.

• We fall. We feel. We stay.

• Every love story changes.

• This is what holding on looks like.

• Sometimes closeness is the bravest thing.

• Fall into something real

• Love doesn’t always feel light

• Some feelings are heavier than words

• This season changes everything

• Nothing stays simple forever

• Intimacy isn’t always easy

• Still soft. Still strong.

• Hold me closer. Mean it harder.

• Falling for each other. Again.

• Quiet love. Loud hearts.

• Not just a phase. A feeling.

• Changing seasons. Unchanging hearts.

• We grow. We ache. We stay.

• Things fall. People stay.

• We turn. We twist. We stay rooted.

• Some things break quietly.

• We’re not where we started.

• Shift happens slowly. Then all at once.

The Result

The final campaign tagline was "Fall hard. Love harder.", a simple, bold line that captured the emotional intensity of Season 3 and aligned with the autumnal theme of the visuals.

Fans got the tone shift immediately. The deeper breath. The way the show had matured without losing itself.

While it wasn’t one of my lines, I contributed a large pool of emotional, intimate, fan-tuned concepts that shaped the creative process, sparked directions, and clarified the tone we were chasing.

When the poster dropped, fans immediately clocked the shift in tone, and they felt it. It trended, it got dissected, and it was quoted under fan art, reaction posts, and emotional TikToks. People cried. People wrote fic. People got it.

And that’s the whole point, a line that doesn’t just describe the season, but feels like it.

This wasn’t about selling a season. It was about honouring it. Giving the characters, and the people who loved them, an ending that didn’t feel like goodbye.