ClickUp’s “Returning to Work: Lunch For The Office” is a pitch-perfect office satire that nails the chaos of hybrid work culture. When a well-meaning employee tries to coordinate lunch for the office, it spirals into a frenzy of slack pings, passive-aggressive edits, timezone mix-ups, and dietary chaos—all to highlight the pain of scattered workflows.
It’s the classic “overcomplicating the simple” trope, but remixed for the modern productivity horror show.
The Formula (That Works at Any Budget):
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Take a Small Task, Blow It Up – The ad takes one low-stakes activity (ordering lunch) and turns it into a full-blown ops nightmare.
→ Lesson: Zoom in on something ridiculously relatable. The more mundane the task, the funnier the exaggeration when it goes wrong. -
Everyone’s a Character, and That’s the Problem – We’ve got the “gluten-free-not-celiac” guy, the timezone-confused manager, the feedback-loop loop… every workplace stereotype shows up.
→ Lesson: Character-driven chaos lets you represent a whole office in 60 seconds. Give your viewers someone to laugh at (and with). -
Product Reveal = Relief – ClickUp steps in as the solution once the lunch situation completely unravels.
→ Lesson: Don’t oversell—let the pain build first. When you offer the solution, it feels like a rescue, not a pitch.
Humor Breakdown:
The entire spot is a slow-motion productivity fail montage. The humor comes from:
Absurd escalation (a simple lunch order becomes a global logistics crisis),
Spot-on stereotypes (we all know that one person who suggests a poll…),
Modern digital fatigue (apps, updates, and misaligned expectations everywhere).
This is “The Office” meets Asana trauma, and it works because it hits exactly where knowledge workers live: in group chats about nothing that somehow feel high stakes.
Final Verdict:
ClickUp’s ad is a clinic in how to make B2B funny without losing sight of the product. It dramatizes the digital messiness we all endure and then hands us a clean way out—turning ClickUp into the adult in the room of project management.
Brave-o-meter score:
B-6 | R-7 | A-7 | V-6 | E-7
BRAVE – 6.6/10
Watch the full ad & learn more:
Website: ClickUp
LinkedIn: ClickUp LinkedIn Page
