Slack tried Sandwich.
Sandwich has helped launch a number of brands that are now ubiquitous. One of the biggest is a product we didn’t think we we needed: Slack.
Slack’s founder, Stewart Butterfield, wrote us an email saying we should try it out and make a video about it. Our founder, Adam, said: Nah, we’re good with what we have. But then we tried Slack out, discovered how great it was, and pretty soon it transformed how we worked. We were sold, and, even better, we realized how we could sell other people on it, too: Just tell our story.
See, a lot of people didn’t think they needed Slack, because they didn’t really know what it was, or how it was better than email or chat or Dropbox. They could relate to our initial skepticism, and they would get the a-ha moment just like we did.
So we shot the video in our office, documentary-style, starring us as ourselves. We even got Stewart to re-enact writing his first email to us. (Complete with annoyed scowl when Adam turns him down.) Instead of cluttering up the spot with a lot of technical details and interface shots, we grounded Slack’s features in actual interactions between actual people actually using them. This not only helped explain how Slack works, but also helped define the brand as human and humorous—something that’s still in its DNA today.
Sandwich Loves Slack
Years later, people still tell us all the time that they used our video to convince their management to give Slack a try...just like we did.
WFH
On the first day of quarantine, we dreamt up a concept for our friends at Slack, telling the story of how we use Slack from home just as effectively as we do from the office. They gave it the green light, and the whole team worked quickly to figure out how to make it happen. This is what we made.
How We Made “Slack WFH”
And we figured, as long as we’re developing cool new methods to continue shooting, why not document it all as we go? And if we’re documenting it all as we go, why not share with the world? Here’s a fun “Making Of” to show how we did it, and how we plan to do it again and again.
