The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2024
HP's 'Wrong Kind of Busy' satirizes office busywork and casts the AI PC as the cure
HP's film for the AI PC satirizes the busywork that eats over half our workdays, rising from resignation to collective rejection of work that feels like work.
HP
What it had to solve
The film sets out from a blunt observation: less than half our workdays are spent doing our actual jobs. The enemy to name was not technology but the tedious busywork everyone recognizes, and the HP AI PC was the solution being positioned.
How it works
The film starts from an observation most office workers can verify: less than half our workdays are spent doing our actual jobs.
The rest is the wrong kind of busy, the tedious, low-value work everyone knows too well. The Wrong Kind of Busy takes aim at that busywork with a satirical voiceover and a diverse range of painfully relatable work scenarios.
The film's arc moves from blanket resignation to collective rejection: viewers first laugh in recognition, then see the waste as something that can be refused. That is where the HP AI PC enters, positioned as the solution and the start of an era where work does not have to feel like work.
The D&AD archive keeps the film, and its page records no response figures. The case rests on the idea: position a machine by indicting the work that wastes us, not by praising the machine.
Why it lands
- Opening with the statistic that less than half our workdays go to actual jobs gives the film a claim viewers can test against their own calendars.
- Satire makes the audience laugh at behavior they recognize, so the critique of busywork feels shared rather than preached.
- Escalating from resignation to collective rejection turns passive recognition into a demand the product can answer.
- Positioning the AI PC as the way out of busywork sells a tool by naming the problem, not by listing features.
What it did
The film framed the HP AI PC as the answer to busywork and the start of an era where work does not have to feel like work. The D&AD archive keeps the work; the page records no response figures.
What you can take
A product launch lands harder when the enemy is a feeling everyone shares: name the wasted hours, satirize them, and the new tool arrives as the obvious way out.
Since then
The D&AD archive lists Wrong Kind of Busy and records no response figures, so the documented output is the film itself: a satirical brand film for the HP AI PC that turns wasted workdays into the villain and the machine into the escape. It frames the product as the solution to busywork and the start of an era where work does not have to feel like work.
Sources
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Your turn
You just read one. Describe the brief you are staring at, and see who has been given the same problem.
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