Paycor:
“Buried at Work” Campaign
- Creative
- Production
- Post
The
Problem
Managers are doing approximately 47 jobs at once, with zero extra hours in the day. Paycor needed to sharpen brand awareness—and answer the lingering “Wait, what does Paycor actually do?” question—by showing how its HR and payroll platform helps overloaded managers get back to the work that matters.
What We Did
We took familiar workplace stress and made it aggressively literal. “Buried at Work” became a mountain of paper; “Swamped at Work” became, well, an actual swamp. By turning office idioms into oversized, handcrafted visual worlds, we made the pressure managers feel instantly recognizable, slightly absurd, and hard to scroll past.
The Payoff
The campaign delivered its message with humor—and real scale—across Connected TV, programmatic video, YouTube, social, and sports venues in 24 DMAs. Following the campaign, Paycor reported 19% sales growth, from $552.7 million in 2023 to $654.9 million in 2024. Not bad for a pile of paperwork and a swamp.