AT&T’s partners at BBDO pointed out that actors are often stereotyped by their most famous roles, so why not have the cast of The Office start a small business and face some of its challenges?
They also noted that most of a business’s early successes and failures play out on social media—and many small businesses gravitate toward LinkedIn—so Wilson’s new LinkedIn page will share his struggles in putting together a team, designing a logo and drawing customers to his company’s site.
The Masters, meanwhile, serves as a surprisingly fitting small-business backdrop for the campaign. According to data from Mastercard’s Economics Institute, the economic impact at hotels, restaurants, shops and other businesses around the event in Augusta, Ga., in 2023 was 1.2 times greater than it was in 2022 and 2.3 times more than what was spent in pre-pandemic 2018.
The first day of the Masters increased local spending by 85%, while the 10 days surrounding the event were an average of 53% more lucrative for local businesses than the preceding or ensuing weeks. That includes golf tourists, whose share of hotel and restaurant spending in the area jumps from 26% before the tournament to 46% during the event.
AT&T Business plans different iterations of this campaign around its reliability, backup services and internet, and will extend it through Small Business Week, which runs from April 28 through May 4. Eventually, it will culminate in a long-form video on YouTube that combines all of the campaign’s parts and lets The Office crew do their thing while showing off AT&T Business’s offerings.
“There is nothing like the challenge that small business customers are faced with,” Vargas said. “It’s highly emotionally charged.”
