Office Depot’s new advertising strategy turns office supplies into ‘gear’

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Pens, paper, folders: For the most part, office supplies are hum-drum commodities sold in many stores and online.

Boca Raton-based office-supply retailer Office Depot, which merged in 2013 with rival OfficeMax, is trying to make office supplies more appealing in its new advertising and social media campaign launched this month.

Office Depot’s new TV spot, “Gear Up for Great,” paints office supplies as “gear” that workers need for success:

“Does the smell of a freshly bound presentation fill you with optimism? Do you love your wireless keyboard more than some family members? Is your success due to a filing system only you understand? Could you and your portable printer inspire a buddy movie?

“If so, you may be Gearcentric,” says the narrator on the TV commercial.

The new ad campaign is the first by Office Depot’s new agency of record, McCann New York. So far it includes a 30-second TV commercial, radio spots and social media posts including social networking sites Tumblr, Twitter and Vine.

“In our culture today, people are always measuring themselves,” explained Tim Rea, chief marketing officer at Office Depot, pointing to the Fitbits people wear around their wrists to measure fitness performance. “Everyone wants to perform at their peak.”

“Gear are things you want to do, like mountain-climbing gear. There’s an emotive attachment to it,” said Rea, happening to name the sport that Office Depot CEO Roland Smith enjoys.

McCann New York’s co-creative officer, Tom Murphy, said a theme of the ad campaign “is a shift from stuff to a role that stuff plays in your life.” He said the agency found in research and testing that people have “a real emotional relationship with their favorite pen or tablet.”

The “Gear Up for Great” theme is versatile enough that “we can build on it in the year to come,” he said.

Local advertising experts took a look at the TV commercial and social media posts and weighed in.

Allen Smith, professor of marketing at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, said the emotional, consumer-oriented approach is often used by companies “that don’t have a rational competitive advantage,” he said.

He likes the optimistic tone of aspiring workers in the Office Depot ad. In contrast, prime rival Staples’ advertising message in its “Easy button” campaign was: “You have pressing problems so you need supplies,” he said.

“That’s not a rosy picture as the optimistic tone of voice that Office Depot is taking,” he said. “I would give them a high five,” he said.

But Margaret Wilesmith, who launched her own firm, Wilesmith Advertising, after working for the Saatchi and Saatchi advertising agency, said she’s not sure whom Office Depot is targeting – young office workers, as pictured in the TV commercial, or small-business owners.

Wilesmith said she thinks McCann was trying to “be a bit edgy for the category, but they didn’t make it. They could have pushed almost all the way to the border of insane and had a lot of fun with it and really disrupted the category,” she said.

“Greatness made possible by the gear? They haven’t really convinced me they’re anything but office supplies,” she said.

Maria Petrescu, assistant professor of marketing at Nova Southeastern University in Davie, said the ad is fun while succeeding in delivering a clear message. But she wonders whether the “gear” approach is “too technical or targeted toward the male population.”

“I’m hoping they will come up with something funnier,” she said.

Rea said the sales staff in Office Depot and OfficeMax stores will soon be trained to incorporate the ad campaign in selling pens, paper, file folders, and other office supplies.

Office Depot, which is shrinking its retail footprint across the country, won’t say what it’s spending on the ad campaign. Advertising Age reports that Office Depot and OfficeMax together spent $105 million on U.S. measured media in 2013, according to Kantar Media.

The ad campaign also strives to combine Office Depot and OfficeMax as one company in the minds of consumers. Both retailer names are featured in the ad.

But the company has combined websites, putting Office Depot’s name on top of a smaller-print OfficeMax, with the text, “Now One Company.”

Rea said the company is consolidating its marketing presence “where it makes sense.”