The office-supply giant's dark-comedy campaign reveals how brands win with buyers by naming the problems they actually face.
Staples has spent decades selling the Easy Button, the promise that their supplies and services make office work simple. Now the office-supply giant has introduced a counterpart: the Hard Button, a dark-comedy mascot that embodies the problems Easy is supposed to solve.
The campaign, according to Marketing Dive, launches a full-funnel push aimed at B2B buyers. The Hard Button surfaces real workplace conundrums: misprinted store signs, supply shortages, chaos in receiving, the friction that happens when a business doesn't have the right systems or supplier. Instead of pretending those problems don't exist, Staples names them.
B2B buyers are tired of vendor promises. Every competitor claims to be easy, fast, or cost-effective. The claim itself has become noise. Staples' move inverts the playbook: before selling the solution, acknowledge the buyer's reality.
A procurement manager or facilities director spends half their day fighting the Hard Button, supply delays, wrong quantities, broken workflows. When a brand names that specific frustration, the buyer stops and listens. They feel understood. That credibility gap is where trust begins, and trust is what converts B2B deals.
The full-funnel approach means the Hard Button idea lives everywhere the buyer appears. At the top, it grabs attention, dark comedy travels on social and in workplace conversations. In the middle, buyers research solutions and remember Staples understood their mess. At the bottom, when they're ready to buy, Staples is the vendor that gets it, not just another option.
This strategy works because it flips B2B messaging from vendor-centric to buyer-centric. Instead of starting with what Staples sells, it starts with what the buyer is struggling to fix.
You don't need a national budget to run the Staples playbook. The core move is simple: identify the one Hard Button your customers hate most, then tell a story about how you solve it. That story can be a customer case study, a before-and-after testimonial, or a product demo. The format doesn't matter. What matters is naming the friction and showing you fix it.
Staples proved that in B2B, the vendor that acknowledges the Hard Button first wins the conversation. The rest are just trying to convince a buyer who has already moved on.
How WebKing runs this
We've built dozens of full-funnel B2B campaigns. The ones that move needle always follow Staples' move here: start with a specific, recognizable pain point (not 'we save you time' but 'we stop your shipments from sitting in receiving for three days'), then show how your brand fixes it. We audit the customer journey, map the friction points, and build creative that names those points before it sells the solution. The brands that do this tend to see 30+ percent higher engagement because they're talking to a real human's real problem, not a persona on a slide.
Because buyers already know their problems exist. By naming them directly, you signal that you understand their world and aren't just reading a script. Staples' Hard Button works because it shows empathy before pitch, which builds credibility in a crowded category where every vendor claims to be easy.
It makes the campaign memorable and shareable, which extends reach across the full funnel. A dark-comedy Hard Button video spreads through workplace conversations and social feeds in ways a standard benefit ad never does, so more of your target buyers see it and feel seen by your brand.
It means the campaign works at every stage: awareness (people laugh at the Hard Button and talk about it), consideration (they start to see Staples as understanding their pain), and decision (they remember Staples the next time they need office supplies or solutions). One creative idea spans all three.
Yes. The insight is free: identify the Hard Button your customers face, then build one strong story around how you solve it. You don't need a national campaign. A well-placed case study, customer testimonial, or product demo that shows the before-and-after of that specific pain point works the same way on a smaller scale.
Sources
The Lab is original analysis by WebKing. We summarize and interpret developments from the sources above for industrial, commercial, and small business owners. Figures are reported as published by their sources.
More from the desk
Photo: Taras ShypkaMost business owners track social wrong. Here's how Hootsuite says to set up measurement so you actually know which posts drive revenue.
Photo: JeremyMeta's September 2026 update strips out placement checkboxes, forcing advertisers to rethink how they isolate and test audience performance across Instagram, Facebook, and Audience Network.
Photo: Brian JonesMeta is automating more of your Facebook and Instagram ads with AI. We break down which parts of your campaigns the algorithm handles better than you do, and when you should keep human control.
Free audit
We read your search, ads and AI visibility, then tell you which of these moves actually applies to your business. Free, 30 minutes, no pitch deck.
