There are very few spaces in which Apple is the challenger brand, and B2B was one of them. While some businesses have always used Apple products, apps and services, broad consideration of Apple’s ecosystem in the workplace was much lower than for established B2B brands (see consideration section).

You could even call us an underdog.

There was a huge growth opportunity, if we could find a way to get IT decision-makers in businesses of all sizes AND Everyday Workers (see target) to reconsider Apple products as great for work.

Enter: The Underdogs, a creative platform that showcased the magic and power of the Apple ecosystem for businesses of all sizes,. Each phase of the campaign was grounded in a very modern product demo: rather than telling people, we SHOWED them how a suite of Apple products, software, and services gives businesses of any size the freedom to work and collaborate more flexibly than ever before.

A breath of fresh air in the rational, benefit-driven world of B2B, the Underdogs showed up at a moment when the world of work was changing faster than we (and they) could keep up. Apple launched two back-to-back integrated campaigns that reflected these seismic changes in real time.

In 2020—very early in the pandemic when the space was quiet—Apple was the first brand to put out creative work that reflected the real time adjustment to remote work: “The Whole Working-From-Home Thing” (WFH). Two years later, we did it again, as the first brand to embrace the huge cultural shift brought about by The Great Resignation and entrepreneurship boom: “Escape from the Office” (Escape).

To separate signal from noise, we took a comprehensive approach to the measurement of this campaign, using a combination of media performance, behavioral data, shifts in brand perception, and critically, short and long term sales impact.

Throughout the series, the Underdogs repeatedly struck a cultural chord. Campaign performance increased with each execution: while the barriers they faced were changing, our creative approach stayed consistent, and the more impactful they became. [See engagement and awareness results.] WFH racked up 34M+ views, and Escape climbed even higher to 35M+. We saw increasing view time across both films, resulting in an eye-popping average watch time of over three minutes for Escape. We also redefined how product demos can be done, with Forbes claiming: “Apple’s New Groundbreaking Epic Work-Of-Art Is The Best Product Demo Ad Ever”.

From a brand perspective, we saw consideration of Apple for work rise significantly in our target audiences in the US [see brand affinity results]; and most importantly, our business results were immediate and significant. We drove a marked lift in beta sign-ups for our new IT device management service for small businesses, Apple Business Essentials, and the performance of Apple hardware in B2B massively outperformed the category. [See sales success results].