Demandbase
Engagement Emporium
A marketer feeds a rigged claw machine, chasing a CMO.
Watch the full campaign · 1:17
The Strategy
Demandbase makes software for B2B teams that sell to a set list of companies, not to everyone. One part of it runs ads on streaming TV, LinkedIn and the web, and shows them only to people who work at the companies on that list. Then it reports back which of those companies saw the ads and what they did next.
The people Demandbase sells to are marketing leaders: CMOs and the heads of demand generation who answer for the budget. Most of them have paid for ads that reached plenty of people and very few of the right ones. They want proof before they buy anything, and they're tired of paying for reach that never turns into pipeline.
We started with a test drive of the product with Demandbase's team, then pitched three strategies. They picked the one we recommended: every ad shown to the wrong person is budget thrown away, and Demandbase exists to stop that.
One of our first ideas was a dusty oddity shop where a marketer goes looking for the right audience. Demandbase's team kept the shop and changed the game inside it: their writer put in a claw machine full of CMOs. We rewrote that version to fit the length of each ad and a one-day shoot.
So the ads open in the Engagement Emporium, a cluttered shop of marketing shortcuts. Stacks of "Pre-Made Funnels" sit on the shelves, magic 8-balls promise to "Predict Campaign Success," and a skull on the counter is labeled "Post-Mortem Analysis." Behind it, a shopkeeper in a sequined hooded robe polishes a crystal ball. Jane, a marketer, walks up and asks if he has any chief marketing officers. He points her to the Snag-a-CMO machine: $500 a play, no cash, with prizes labeled "VP-ish," "Used to be a CMO" and "Probably a CMO."
The campaign is five ads. The 15-second teaser is the walk-in: the question, the answer and Jane's first look at the machine. The 30-second main spot is the game itself. The 15-second follow-up picks up later, when the machine finally pays out. Two short reminders come back to the card reader and the claw. Every ad closes on the same question: still feeding the machine?
The Process
We shot it in one day in October 2025, in a Denver studio, on a set built from our own walls, after a day of prep. The walls got their color for this shoot and were repainted overnight for the next one.
Our production designer made the props: the shop's sign, every labeled shortcut on the shelves, the hand-lettered prize tags and the card reader on the machine. One of the prizes talks, and its voice was added in post. The shopkeeper's look came out of a few rounds of costume options with Demandbase's team.
The claw machine is real. We rented a working vintage machine, and every grab in the ads is real: the actor is really playing. Anyone who has tried to win one particular prize at an arcade knows why it took a lot of takes.
Partway through the day, the machine broke. Repair techs for vintage claw machines are rare, and the one we reached couldn't come out on short notice, so he talked Brian, from our team, through the fix over the phone. Brian is the mechanical one, and he got it running again. While he worked, we kept shooting the other scenes, with Brian directing from a handheld monitor while lying on his back under the machine.
We delivered a 30-second main spot, a 15-second teaser and follow-up, and two reminders of about seven seconds each, with and without subtitles. We also delivered a version of the main spot for streaming TV and still portraits of Jane and the shopkeeper.
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