Naysayer Campaign

As a high-tech, lesser-known headless commerce platform in a market dominated by legacy industry behemoths, commercetools needed a provocative awareness campaign to set them apart in the minds of non-technical business leaders. Competing against inflexible, outdated platforms with outsized brand awareness, they had to draw a line in the sand — positioning themselves as the agile, innovative platform for future-facing commerce success.

Building off an insight that organizations felt trapped by outdated tech, I worked with a Walker Sands team to concept a campaign that painted legacy players as an insufferable, inflexible "Naysayer." To further stand out as a serious competitor in a crowded market, we enlisted the talents of Will Arnett to play the titular character. Encompassing three marquee videos, omnichannel paid and organic activations, and micro-OOH ads around major industry conferences, the campaign succeeded in catching the leaders' attention — drawing 16.9M video views in just three months with a 54% video completion rate.

As the campaign's lead copywriter, I supported at every phase of the campaign, from scripting brand videos, to offering on-set fixes, to writing digital and OOH ad copy. To further extend the campaign's life online, I wrote six blogs from the perspective of the Naysayer — extolling the benefits of a life unbothered by self-improvement. The campaign also extended down the funnel into a data report, which I drove traffic to through ad and landing page copy that commented on data from the Naysayer's perspective.