Office Depot's Lame Response to the Easy Button

We have already seen recent offensive and foul :30 spots in 2007 and Office Depot has wrung in the new year with a big misdirected and off-the-mark advertising campaign of their own. As Office Depot has recently began a campaign to counter Staples' Easy Button advertisements. The advertisements feature a box containing an arm protruding from the top and assisting people in situations where an extra hand can be helpful. The Easy Button campaign has been largely successful for Staples and the company has even sold millions of replica Easy Buttons.

This new campaign for Office Depot is not only disturbing it almost is laughable. Instead of store workers helping out customers, a box with an arm is doing the job. It almost feels like I'm watching a promo for the Adams Family with Thing, a servant in the form of a disembodied hand, doing office work.

How well does using a hand helping differentiate Office Max, or was it Office Depot, anyways, from its competition? Not very well. In the already commoditized market of office supplies, this new campaign doesn't help Office Depot set them self apart from the competition. This is something that their next campaign should focus on.

A big thumbs down for this campaign.