Staples Invents a Villain Button to Sell Its Boring Stuff

Staples has spent two decades owning the easy button. On September 23, it introduced the button's dark twin: a black "hard button," built to headline a new campaign called "Hard vs. Easy" that is less about retail shoppers and more about the office manager who just ran out of restroom supplies at the worst possible moment.

The two launch ads lean into exactly that kind of workplace mishap, including a printing error that turns "Shirts" into something considerably less appropriate for a company memo. The campaign runs across streaming, LinkedIn, Meta, out-of-home, and even elevator screens, developed in-house with agency support from Bandits & Friends.

CMO Bob Sherwin, who joined Staples in 2025, named the actual problem plainly: "We don't have an awareness problem, we have a perception problem." Roughly 75% of the Fortune 500 already buy from Staples for furniture, break room supplies, and B2B services, but the brand in most people's heads is still a strip-mall store selling notebooks. A villain button will not fix a balance sheet, but it might fix a stereotype, which for Staples right now is arguably the more useful problem to solve.

Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →