The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2022
Apple's Underdogs escape the office to start their own business in the third film
Riding the Great Resignation, Apple's third Underdogs film has the trio escape their evil boss and found their own business using Apple products and services.
Apple
What it had to solve
Audiences had met the Underdogs over pizza, then followed them into working from home. So when the Great Resignation began, the characters had to make a return — facing the moment everyone in an office was deciding whether to stay.
How it works
Audiences had met the Underdogs over pizza, then followed them into working from home. So when the Great Resignation began, the characters had to make a return — facing the moment everyone in an office was deciding whether to stay.
Escape from the Office, the third instalment in Apple's Underdogs series, catches the team using a suite of Apple products and services to make a break from their evil boss and start a business of their own. The film's point: when your peers and your devices work together, there's nothing you can't handle.
The episode took the series from office comedy to founding story, putting Apple's workplace tools at the centre of the era's biggest question about work. It is filed in the D&AD awards archive.
Why it lands
- Building the film around the Great Resignation made Apple relevant to a real workplace decision, not to a product feature.
- Continuing the same characters across films turned a commercial into a story audiences had followed for years.
- The escape is achieved with Apple's products and services, so the products are the plot rather than the punchline.
What it did
The episode took the series from office comedy to founding story, putting Apple's workplace tools at the centre of the era's biggest question about work. The film premiered in March 2022, won a Film Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2022, and the work is filed in the D&AD awards archive.
What you can take
A recurring cast lets a brand meet cultural moments as chapters of one story: the Underdogs' working life gave Apple a ready-made plot for every shift in how people work.
Since then
Escape from the Office premiered in March 2022, near the height of the Great Resignation, and won a Film Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2022; the episode is also an entry in the D&AD Annual 2022. The archive records no view or sales figures, so the case stands on the storytelling mechanism: let a running cast live through the workplace moment everyone is discussing, and the brand's tools become part of that conversation.
Sources
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