Rainn Wilson on getting ‘The Office’ gang back together for AT&T Business

Rainn Wilson has seen plenty of advertising that tries to be funny but falls woefully short. But the actor says his new AT&T Business campaign is different, both because of its scope and the collaborative nature of its creation. See all of Ad Age’s 2024 Creativity Award winners here The BBDO campaign began in mid-April with cryptic posts on Wilson’s LinkedIn page about how he’d started Dream with Rainn, a business “devoted to making the world a better place.” (The actor didn’t actually have a LinkedIn account—one had to be made for him.) Soon after, a teaser spot rolled out online that got fans of “The Office” particularly excited. The ad didn’t just include Wilson (who played Dwight Schrute on the long-running NBC sitcom)—his former co-stars Jenna Fischer, Craig Robinson, Creed Bratton, Kate Flannery and Brian Baumgartner were also being roped into his “business idea.” Before long, the full gag was revealed. Wilson’s big idea was a pillow with speakers that people could use to fall asleep to the sound of his voice. The campaign—part of AT&T’s ongoing “Next Level Network” brand platform—would see Wilson and friends launch the (mostly) fake product with tech support from AT&T Business. The pillow’s somewhat botched launch is dramatized in a comical six-minute video, directed by Smuggler’s Mark Molloy, that rolled out on AT&T’s social channels—with a 30-second cut that aired during The Masters golf tournament. Wilson told Ad Age this week that AT&T and BBDO came to him with the framework of the idea but that it kept growing. “They said, ‘Oh, we’d like to bring on Craig as well.’ Then all of a sudden it was Craig and Jenna and Brian and Kate and Creed—half the ‘Office’ cast. And honestly, what a delight to spend a couple of days on the set with my old family. I always said I had my family at home and for 10 years I had this other family at Dunder Mufflin. It was just a hoot.” Wilson brought in Aaron Lee, a friend who’s written for shows including “Family Guy” and “Ted,” to work on the campaign, which extended beyond the video scripts to all sorts of other content, from website copy to more LinkedIn posts to a whole album of spoken-word sleep tracks available on Spotify. A feel-good ensemble For the client, the goal was to show how AT&T Business helps small businesses with a variety of offerings, from networking services to cybersecurity to cloud connectivity. Having old colleagues from “The Office” start their own new business was a way to create a humorous use case that could humanize the tech and how it can help. “Dunder Mifflin wasn’t necessarily a small business, but it was not a big business by any stretch,” said Wilson. “They thought of us as possible entrepreneurs who come from the business world. They also wanted the feel-good nature of this mini-ensemble coming back together.” Much of the longform video was scripted, but as a bloopers reel shows, the actors were trying different things and improvising. “It really was unlike most commercial campaigns I’ve done before,” Wilson said. “It was very collaborative, which gave me more ownership in the campaign. It was a little bit more like creating a TV show than just doing a regular ad campaign.” It helped that Molloy, the director, has experience doing ensemble comedies where people invent and market new products, having made all of Apple’s lauded “Underdogs” videos. “He got really funny performances out of everyone,” Wilson said. “Jenna, for example—people forget how comedically brilliant Jenna Fischer is. Her timing is absolutely impeccable, and he was able to capture that really well. And there were the action sequences, too.” Ad Age Creativity Bookmark our section covering the best in brand creativity every day Read more here The scope of the campaign was also unusual, Wilson added. They shot the films over two and a half days, and the content went well beyond the videos, too. “It wasn’t ‘Go in for a few hours and say a few funny lines.’ It was like we filmed a Jason Statham movie in an office,” Wilson said. “And the campaign is everywhere. It’s on social media. It has its own website. It’s on LinkedIn. There are products people can win. It’s been on TV. They really pulled out all the stops, which is how you break through these days.” Indeed, the Dream with Rainn Sweepstakes, running through May 10, allows website visitors to enter to win their own limited-edition Sleep with Rain pillow. Sleep tracks on Spotify The “Guided Sleep” tracks on Spotify—somewhat reminiscent of the album Jeff Bridges recorded for Squarespace a decade ago—shows the extent of the creative content. There’s more than 40 minutes of hypnotic dialogue across the six tracks. “[The agency] wrote three pages of monologue of what I would say in the pillow, and then Aaron and I wrote another two pages, and then I improvised a bunch. It was funny and so silly,” Wilson said. “But actually, a talking pillow that puts you to sleep—it’s not a bad idea. It’s enough within the realm of plausibility these days. I don’t know if you know this, but people will film themselves sleeping on Twitch and it’ll get hundreds of thousands of views. It’s a different world, man.” Wilson—who’s been an AT&T customer for 20 years—said he’s pleased with the results of the campaign. Comedy in advertising is hard, he said, given that the “rougher edges” that actually make something funny often get smoothed out in the process. But he commended AT&T for being game for something “weirder” than usual. “It was the ‘Office’ reunion no one knew they needed,” he said. “The feedback I’ve been getting has been fantastic. The longform ad should win an Emmy. It should win an Oscar maybe. OK, that’s going too far.”

Rainn Wilson on getting ‘The Office’ gang back together for AT&T Business

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