Chronosphere
Logs That Matter
A VP of Engineering drowns in a room of literal logs.
Watch the full campaign · 1:17
The Strategy
Chronosphere helps big tech companies keep track of what their software is doing. Every app throws off logs, a running record of everything that happens, and companies pay to store them. Most get stored and never read. Chronosphere had just launched a logging product that shows which logs a team actually uses and helps cut the rest, so the bill comes down without losing what engineers need.
The people who sign that bill are engineering leaders. They know they're overpaying. They're also afraid to cut the one log they'll need in the middle of an outage, and they don't want to be the boss who takes tools away from their own engineers. So the ads had to make the waste funny without making the engineers the bad guys.
Chronosphere's team had already been having fun with the word "logs" in their own event marketing, beaver mascot included. They pointed out the double meaning. We pitched a few ideas, and everyone liked the one that took it literally, shot like a workplace documentary in the style of The Office.
So the ads open on the ingestion room: a bare white room where the servers should be, with a mountain of real wooden logs in the middle. A paper label is nailed to every log. A metal chute overhead keeps dropping more. A documentary crew is there to interview the tired VP of Engineering who runs the place, and somewhere in the pile is a developer who can't bear to throw any of them away.
Chronosphere helped us write the labels, picking things their audience would recognize at a glance. Then they let us have fun with some of them.
The 15-second teaser is the VP's tour, and the question he can't answer: which logs matter? The 30-second main spot asks what all this costs, just before the pile bursts open and the developer climbs out with the one log he was looking for. The 15-second follow-up checks back in after Chronosphere: the chute has slowed, the pile is smaller and the VP finally knows which logs matter. Two short reminders close it out, the chute pouring nonstop and then a nearly empty floor.
The Process
We shot it in one day in August 2025, in a studio, on a set built from our own walls. We prepped the night before.
The logs are real. Local tree trimming crews gave us a lot of them. We stacked them on a series of tables and platforms to build the pile up high, then a visual effects artist filled in the base so it looks massive. About two-thirds of the logs you see were added in post.
The chute is 10 to 12 feet of aluminum duct, left bare for an industrial look, hung over the back wall and pointed at the top of the pile. Off camera, a crew member stood on a rolling metal staircase and fed logs into the far end, so they seem to pour in on their own.
Falling logs are loud. We padded the landing spot with furniture pads to keep the sound under control. Dan Sullivan, from our team, sat hidden behind the pile next to the chute. He caught each log that came down and set it aside, so the next one hit the pad instead of cracking into another log.
For the developer's big entrance, we built a hidden frame inside the pile. The actor crouched in it under a shell of logs and burst out on cue.
Brian, from our team, directed. One small Easter egg: the VP's ID badge carried a working QR code while the campaign ran, for anyone who paused to look.
The logs didn't go to waste. The crew took some home for campfires. We posted the rest online as free firewood outside the studio, and it was gone before the next day's shoot wrapped.
We delivered a 30-second main spot, two 15-second ads and two short reminders, in widescreen, square and vertical, with and without subtitles, plus portraits of both characters for landing pages and ads. They send viewers to LogsThatMatter.com. Chronosphere ran its own media.
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