Smartsheet TV Ad Depicts A Hellish Existence For The Few Firms That Don't Use Its Software

Most B2B TV commercials tend to focus on the amazing things customers are doing with the advertiser’s product, but a recent spot from Smartsheet puts the spotlight on the holdouts instead.

In “Work Different,” the SaaS-based provider of project management and collaboration tools boasts that 96 per cent of the Fortune 500 use its product. While the remaining four per cent might have alternative products in place, such as Google’s G-Suite or Microsoft Office, the commercial captures scenes from the worst kind of work environments. This includes a boss ripping up paper and angry tossing the pieces around in a staff meeting, executives burying their faces in their hands over the mountain of messages in their inbox and more.

“Post-mortems, pre-mortems, forecasting, re-casting,” the voiceover says, implying a lot of wasted effort in offices that fail to stay on the same page when they’re trying to do something important within a business. In contrast, the spot ends with a cross-section of industries who SmartSheet counts among its installed base. These include other high-tech firms (as shown by a data center), airlines and more.

Besides the TV spot, Smartsheet has been commissioning a series of research studies that help validate the need for its products. A sponsored post on Forbes, for instance, looks at why many enterprise projects fall short of success due to collaboration issues, based on data from Forrester Consulting. Another post on Forbes weaves in data from a study for Smartsheet produced by 451 Research.

In its most recent earnings call, meanwhile, Smartsheet said it had ended the quarter with close to 78,000 domain-based customers.