Perk Launches Global Ad Campaign Highlighting How Shadow Work Gets in the Way of Breakthroughs

Perk, the intelligent travel and spend management platform, today launched a global ad campaign including its first-ever CTV ad aimed at exposing the hidden work costing businesses more than $1.7 trillion a year. 

“Breakthroughs… almost” imagines a world where history’s greatest breakthroughs never happened, derailed by the hidden tasks Perk calls “shadow work” — invisible, non-core work employees do outside their main job. The campaign takes us on a journey through history, reimagining moments of progress, past and future, being lost to booking trips, filing expenses, coding invoices, or chasing approvals.

Co-created by Perk and AnalogFolk, and produced by Untold Fable, the multi-channel campaign brings Perk’s “powering real work” brand platform to life, uniting travel and spend in a single AI-native experience designed to help teams focus on higher-value tasks.

Jada Balster, Perk VP Marketing said: “With the Perk brand launch, we knew we wanted to do something bold and show up differently to traditional B2B. We’ve been shaping this idea with AnalogFolk since early last summer. As soon as we started discussing the concept it was clear we were onto something that felt right for the story we wanted to tell. This campaign brings that ambition to life, showing how Perk uses AI and automation to remove the shadow work that gets in the way of breakthroughs.” 

Anna-Louise Gladwell, Managing Director, AnalogFolk, said: “‘Breakthroughs… almost’ was an opportunity to make a universal, yet invisible, problem visible through humour and bold storytelling. By imagining how history’s greatest innovators might have been derailed by everyday admin, the campaign highlights the real cost of shadow work in a way that’s entertaining, relatable and impossible to ignore.”

Untold Fable produced the 60-second spot in collaboration with Femi Oludigbolu, an award-winning writer-director from South London, alongside bespoke music composed by producer Ife Ladi. The new campaign will be rolled out on CTV, digital, social and paid media channels across Europe and the US.  

Since November, Perk has also supported its new positioning with high-profile OOH placements, including the NASDAQ in Times Square, featured in leading print publications such as The Wall Street Journal and launched digital activations across social media, podcasts and other channels.