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“Working” From Home.
Fabric and craft retailer JOANN wanted a holiday activation in 2020 to build awareness to their extensive assortment of crafting and baking supplies. To break through the pile of “We’re In This Together” ads, we wanted to play off the 2020 zeitgeist in a fresh, more honest way. Knowing that crafting and baking was surging in popularity, primarily because of all of us were now being forced to work from home, we began discussing ways to spoof our new collective WFH culture.
With nothing truly capturing work culture like The Office series, we began to reimagine everybody’s favorite sitcom being based in 2020 with all of the characters working from home and zoom calling each other (just like we were while concepting this activation).
“Is Phyllis available?”
“Let us make some calls!”
We negotiated the deal and secured Phyllis for the brand.
Our goal was to keep it as true to the mokumentary genre and as far from feeling like a long form infomercial as possible. We focused on fan-favorite Phyllis since she was already known for her crafting habits, and launched the activation with three episodes. Each episode co-starred a craft influencer and featured a mini-tutorial on all-new crafts that were later featured on Joann.com.
The campaign was so successful, we ended up scripting and producing a second round with Phyllis featuring Spring, Halloween (a fan favorite) and a Holiday Tale.
