The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2024
AT&T Business puts The Office cast in charge of a startup — a Rainn Wilson talking pillow
Small-business optimism at a 10-year low, AT&T Business reunited The Office cast to launch a fake startup selling a Rainn Wilson sleep pillow.
AT&T Inc. (AT&T Business)
What it had to solve
Small-business owners' optimism had fallen to a 10-year low, and owners reported losing sleep over the worries of running their companies. AT&T Business, which sells connectivity and services to small firms, wanted to win consideration from owners who had never thought about switching providers. Instead of another serious B2B pitch, it bet that humor would break through: reunite the cast of The Office — fiction's most famously incompetent workplace — and let them show that if they can start a company, anyone can, with AT&T Business beside them.
How it works
By 2024, small-business owners' optimism had hit a 10-year low and owners reported losing sleep over business worries — precisely the audience AT&T Business wanted to reach. B2B marketing had become a 'sea of sameness', so instead of a serious reliability pitch, AT&T reunited the cast of The Office, the most famously incompetent office in TV fiction, and let them fumble through launching a company of their own.
Rainn Wilson's startup, revealed during the Masters golf broadcast in April 2024, made the 'Sleep with Rain' pillow: a talking pillow with his voice and affirmations to ease owners' anxieties. Jenna Fischer, Craig Robinson, Brian Baumgartner, Creed Bratton and Kate Flannery joined, each representing a business archetype with custom sleep-audio tracks. The fiction was made concrete — product website, infomercial, an album and a six-minute Mark Molloy film — with AT&T Business's 'Next Level Network' keeping the chaos online.
The gamble worked: within two weeks AT&T called it the most successful campaign in AT&T Business history, with more than 2.5 billion impressions, over 150 million film views in seven days and a 99% positive social sentiment score. Owned-social engagement ran 400% above the brand's previous best campaign, social impressions rose 7,720% versus 2023, and the work went on to win AT&T Business its first Cannes Lions Silver Lion.
Why it lands
- It flipped the category's weakness into the idea: B2B advertising was bland, so AT&T made the famous fictional worst-run office the hero of a small-business story.
- It spoke to a real, measurable pain — owners' sleep deprivation — with a product fans could imagine buying, not just an ad they could skip.
- The fiction was built for real: a website, an album, an infomercial and a cast-run company made the joke physical and earned attention beyond the media buy.
- Launching from zero followers on LinkedIn, where business owners actually talk, made the stunt feel like a real startup's journey rather than a corporate campaign.
What it did
In less than two weeks, AT&T reported, Sleep with Rain became the most successful campaign in AT&T Business history: more than 2.5 billion impressions in high-impact publications, over 150 million film views in seven days, a 99% positive social sentiment score, owned-social engagement 400% above the brand's previous best campaign and social impressions up 7,720% versus 2023. Short-form video completion outpaced benchmarks by 57%, and the media buy beat expected impressions by 37%.
What you can take
In a category drowning in sameness, humor that admits real customer pain outperforms polish — casting fictional failures made a telco pitch feel like an inside joke the audience shared.
Since then
Sleep with Rain became a creative benchmark for AT&T Business: it won the company's first-ever Cannes Lions prize, a 2024 Silver Lion for Use of Humor, and the 2025 Web Marketing Association Internet Advertising Competition named it Best of Show Online Campaign alongside wins in the B2B, entertainment and telecommunication categories. The campaign anchored AT&T's broader 'Connecting Changes Everything' platform, and its fictional company and pillow site remained part of the story's media assets after launch.
Sources
- AT&T Business Reunites Rainn Wilson, Jenna Fischer, Craig Robinson, and more for 'Dream with Rainn'
- AT&T - Sleep with Rain
- Sleep with Rain — 17th Annual Shorty Awards entry
- AT&T Wins Silver Lions at Cannes Lions Int'l Festival of Creativity
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