Bucking category convention, the first U.S. brand-awareness campaign from Germany-based SEEBURGER uses humor to show that a seamless and efficient integration platform offers its customers relief—and the opportunity to reclaim time and attention.
The centerpiece of the campaign, created by SEEBURGER’s U.S. agency of record The MX Group (MX) in Burr Ridge, IL., is a spot featuring an office worker who finally notices a coworker brings his pet falcon, “Robert,” to work on Tuesdays. While admittedly hard to miss, the bird of prey perched on a colleague’s arm went unnoticed until the team used SEEBURGER, giving them the bandwidth to “notice things.” The spot was shot in The MX Group offices featuring Chicago-based improv talent.
“The spot captures a simple truth: When integration runs smoothly in the background, you finally have time to notice what’s happening around you,” says Jan Kirsch, U.S. Managing Director, SEEBURGER INC. “Humor turns that highly technical message into a story people can immediately relate to and remember.”
While using humor in its marketing is a departure for the 40-year-old company, Kirsch says it is geared toward boosting awareness of SEEBURGER in a critical market: “The U.S. market is crowded, and we needed something as hard to ignore as Robert. Humor creates attention and recall that a conventional feature-and-benefit ad rarely achieves.”
The spot is part of a larger campaign running in multiple markets themed “Love Your Integration” from SEEBURGER and MX. Playful print and social executions show tech workers embracing laptops, servers, and other equipment because they are delighted to find an integration platform that’s “stable, scalable, and strangely lovable.”
Paul Hirsch, chief creative officer of The MX Group, says it was bold for the SEEBURGER marketing team to embrace a creative idea that’s accessible and memorable.
“Most enterprise technology advertising tries to explain what software does,” Hirsch says. With the new brand film, “SEEBURGER sets out to show what it feels like instead. Using humor, the campaign turns an invisible benefit—integrations that simply work—into something people can instantly understand and remember. The comedy isn’t about technology; it’s about the freedom technology creates.”
MX’s Hirsch, who previously worked with B2C brands, urges B2B marketers to communicate in more engaging ways. This past spring the agency won an EFFIE for a campaign for Okta that replaced traditional fear-based cybersecurity messaging with a more optimistic focus on human capability and possibility.
Says SEEBURGER Markeing Director Kris Tassoni: “At SEEBURGER, we take care of integration complexity so our customers can focus on moving their business forward. Our 97% customer retention rate reflects the strength of that commitment. But as a challenger in a market dominated by much larger competitors, delivering value is not enough. We also need a distinctive voice. ‘Love Your Integration’ brings substance and personality together: dependable integration that makes work easier, expressed with the confidence and humor to stand out.”
