Sentry's in-house team continued Sentry’s 2022 “Sentry Can’t Fix This” campaign with a series of paid ads for You Tube and LinkedIn. We depicted situations both mundane and outrageous where Sentry can’t help. Then we switched the subject back to what we can do: speed up slow software and reduce crashes.
Challenge
Instead of hiring an agency, we wrote, designed, animated, and produced 7 pre-roll ads with full character animation using a skeleton crew: one writer, 2 artists, and one animator. We needed to keep people watching once the "Skip Ad" button appeared, so we told a funny story in the first 5 seconds, and followed with a closing gag at the end of the ad. It worked: viewers were so taken with our silly, cartoonish encounters that they stuck around to hear our story.
ROLE
• Producer
• Character Animator
• Sound & Music Editor
Our biggest hit was also our most offbeat ad. Sentry's founder, David Cramer, was tired of seeing ads with phones and laptops. "Show me something I haven't seen before!" he demanded. So our artists got as far away from the office as possible: they drew a kangaroo rat atop a desert tortoise slowing down traffic as it crossed the road. It got more engagement than anything else in the campaign, and even got some great comments from our viewers.
Once we'd conquered the pre-roll ad format, we decided to cut to the chase more quickly . Everyone looks at their phone in bed, and everyone knows cats can be unpredictable. So we released a six-second ad that hit hard... literally.
Sentry Can’t Fix This was a success. Our engagement broke records for the company, not only in share of views, but with engagement as well. And we did it staying true to the company’s brand, speaking in the company’s voice. We even got a writeup in a marketing newsletter.