The Hartford is giving small businesses a dance break with its snappy “Play On: Office Dance” campaign.
The Hartford fulfills the insurance needs of over a million small businesses. Now they’re breaking the monotony of office life by giving their online workers a dance break. While it is pretty catchy, albeit not as viral at Pharrell Williams’ “Happy,” the video shows a variety of workers shaking their asses off in what one might call dance moves. Pretty fun for an old school insurance agency.
The ad is a rather interesting diversion for a few minutes. Think of it as the YouTube version of a “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel (remember those?). There are six genres of music and three rooms in the office to click through. The workers’ goofy dance moves are certainly entertaining. After all, who doesn’t like to laugh at others who have bad dance moves? As soon as each segment ends, the employees go back to their routines and of course a link to The Hartford’s small-business landing page appears.
While the video is admittedly enjoyable, the novelty wears off after a couple minutes. The Hartford says they “expect to see a lot of sharing and interaction” with this ad. While I like the video, I certainly didn’t feel the need to Tweet about it or email it to friends. I’m not sure how many people will.
The Hartford as a brand is committed to helping their commercial customers be prepared, feel protected and ultimately prevail when the unexpected happens, so they can Play On. Well, that’s the jargon that’s on the company’s press release. So of course it’s the truth, right? All told, I’m of two minds regarding this campaign. On one hand, I can’t deny that the spot itself is pretty engaging. On the other, I wonder how many click-throughs they’ll actually get to The Hartford’s small-business homepage – even if the video does prove popular on social media. Regardless, The Hartford and Rodgers Townsend will get a lot of “did you see that’s” from this campaign.