Acro Commerce
Sell Without The Drama
A buyer drags her supplier onto a trashy daytime talk show.
Watch the full campaign · 1:20
The Strategy
Acro Commerce builds online stores for B2B companies, mostly manufacturers. The buyers who order from those companies want to shop the way they do at home: find it, click it, done. But plenty of suppliers still make them call a rep, fill out a form or wait on a quote. Acro connects a modern store to the old systems a company already runs, so its buyers can order on their own.
Acro's own marketing was smart and serious. They wanted ads that felt more human and hit the real frustration. Their buyers don't talk in industry words like "composable," and manufacturers can't stand "digital transformation." So the ads skip the jargon and go straight to the feeling.
That feeling was easy to name. Buying from a bad supplier is a bad relationship. If customers have to fight just to give you money, they'll leave for someone who makes it easy. And where do bad relationships go to fight in public? A trashy daytime talk show.
So Acro got its own: B2B Breakdown, our take on Jerry Springer and Maury. Host April Benson runs the stage. Janet, a procurement officer at a fitness chain, just wants to order treadmills without picking up the phone. Rick, the ecommerce manager at her supplier, sweats through his excuses about his old system. The only jargon in the whole campaign comes out of Rick's mouth. The audience boos, and April has a surprise.
The 15-second teaser plays like a promo for the episode: buyer versus supplier, a crowd out for blood, and Rick pushed onstage to boos and a flying shoe. The 30-second main spot is the episode itself. The 15-second follow-up checks back in with Janet and Rick after Acro, both now in orange Acro gear. The short reminders close the show: April's sign-off to the camera, and the laptop with Acro on its screen.
The Process
We shot it in one day in April 2025, in a studio, on a talk show set we built from our own walls. Daytime TV sets look cheap on purpose, so ours does too: a fake business office with a water cooler, filing cabinets, a framed show logo and two guest chairs. The wardrobe tells you who's who before anyone speaks. Janet wears a red tracksuit, Rick a gray suit and April a green blazer.
Janet's chair has to come apart mid-rant. It's a pre-cut chair held together by gravity and Velcro, so it gives way the moment she stomps it.
The shoe took about ten takes. Dan Sullivan was our camera assistant that day. Before each take, he held up the clapperboard, ducked below the lens, then turned and threw on cue. The target was the filing cabinet right in front of Rick as he walks on, and we moved the throw closer and farther from him take by take.
Our director, Adam, wanted it to miss, so Rick's face would show fear, not pain. On one take, Rick took the shoe to the chest anyway. It was a light, comfy shoe. He laughed it off and said it was bound to happen eventually.
The studio audience is smaller than it looks. Two or three extras sat with our crew and a few Video Brothers employees. That's our co-founder Chandler in the neck brace. We added crowd sound in the edit to fill the room.
We delivered a 30-second main spot, two 15s and two short reminders, in widescreen, square and vertical, with and without subtitles. They send viewers to SellWithoutDrama.com. Acro ran its own media.
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