Whereby's 2021 'Welcome to Whereby. Where better meetings happen.' campaign, created by Lucky Generals, dramatises video meeting dysfunction to reposition the
How Whereby Made Video Meeting Misery the Whole Point
Whereby's 2021 campaign 'Welcome to Whereby. Where better meetings happen.' is a 30-second film that dramatises the dysfunction of video calls to position the platform as the rational, human alternative for remote workers in the United Kingdom and beyond.
Whereby launched this campaign in May 2021, making it the brand's first above-the-line advertising effort, as confirmed by Clapboard's editorial records. Created by London agency Lucky Generals, the film takes a surrealist approach to a near-universal frustration: the video meeting nightmare. Rather than leading with product features, the campaign opens in chaos — pixelated faces, failed connections, and a cast of absurdist characters including a mime and a pickle monster — before presenting Whereby as the exit route. The tagline 'Where better meetings happen' closes the film with deceptive simplicity, doubling as both a brand promise and a literal description of the product's purpose.
In the United Kingdom, the campaign arrived at a moment when remote work had restructured professional life almost entirely. Distributed across LinkedIn, YouTube, and WeTransfer in both the United Kingdom and the United States, the film targeted professionals who had spent months navigating the indignities of incumbent platforms. The campaign's Clapboard Score of 64 out of 100 reflects a creative execution that lands its premise convincingly but operates in a competitive creative landscape where distinctiveness is difficult to sustain. Ryan Bonnici, CMO at Whereby, described the advertisement as 'a fun way of triggering some of those challenges and showing users that there is a better way,' as reported by Creative Salon. That framing — problem recognition before product resolution — is the structural engine of the entire campaign.
Whereby entered its first brand campaign against a market dominated by platforms with vastly greater name recognition.
In 2021, Zoom held approximately 50% market share in the video conferencing sector based on buyer-interest data published by Solutions Trustradius, while Microsoft Teams held approximately 23% of the same market according to the same source. Cisco Webex held approximately 11% and Google Meet approximately 4%, per solutions.trustradius.com. That distribution left Whereby operating in a market where the top four incumbents collectively owned the dominant share of professional attention. Charlie Hurst, Creative Director at Lucky Generals, explicitly positioned Whereby as an alternative to Zoom, Google, and Skype, according to Clapboard's editorial records, naming the competitive set the campaign was designed to disrupt.
The strategic insight underpinning the campaign is grounded in dissatisfaction rather than aspiration. Rather than promising innovation or speed — the habitual language of technology advertising — Lucky Generals identified that video meeting frustration had become so widespread it constituted a shared cultural experience. In the United Kingdom, where hybrid and remote working arrangements had accelerated sharply through 2020 and into 2021, that frustration carried particular emotional weight. The global video conferencing market was valued at approximately $6.03 billion in 2021, according to financesonline.com, with forecast compound annual growth of 19.7% projected through to 2026 by the same source. Whereby's decision to enter this expanding but incumbent-heavy market with a brand-first, emotion-led campaign reflects a deliberate choice to build identity before chasing conversion. Matt Gainsford, Strategist at Lucky Generals, developed the strapline 'Where better meetings happen' to define what the brand stood for, noting that it works linguistically by incorporating part of the brand name itself, as reported by Creative Salon — a structural brand decision as much as a creative one.
The campaign's creative execution is anchored in a single, sustained metaphor: the video meeting as waking nightmare.
Director Jeffrey Max of production company Fatal Farm shot the 30-second film with producer Giles Skillicorn, according to Clapboard's editorial records. Creative production took place in Kyiv, as confirmed by Clapboard, a logistical detail that underlines the international scope of what was, in ambition, a United Kingdom-led brand-building exercise. Fatal Farm is known for work that deploys absurdist and comedic visual language with precision, and the Whereby film draws directly on that sensibility. The surrealist sequence — featuring creepy twins, a mime, a pickle monster, and cascading connection failures — is constructed to feel simultaneously ridiculous and recognisable, which is the creative risk the campaign requires to function.
Andy Nairn, founding partner of Lucky Generals, described the film as reflecting the 'traumatising' quality of everyday video meetings, as reported by Creative Salon. That word choice is deliberate: by naming the experience as trauma, Nairn signals that the creative team understood they were not exaggerating for comic effect but amplifying something audiences already felt to be true. The campaign's humor operates as a form of validation rather than mere entertainment. Ryan Bonnici, CMO at Whereby, reinforced this in remarks reported by Creative Salon, describing the advertisement as designed to trigger recognition of real challenges before presenting the brand as resolution. The film's single media asset was distributed across LinkedIn, YouTube, and WeTransfer, platforms chosen for their alignment with professional audiences in the United Kingdom and the United States, making the targeting as considered as the creative itself. The brand ambition behind the film, as stated publicly, was to build trust and humanise meetings even when they occur on a screen.
Whereby's 2021 campaign generated documented engagement across its distribution channels.
According to Clapboard's editorial records, the campaign accumulated 878,447 views, 57 likes, and 11 comments across its tracked distribution. These figures represent the verified public engagement data associated with the film and reflect a campaign that achieved substantial reach for a brand executing its first above-the-line effort. No independently verified conversion data, media spend figures, or platform-specific performance breakdowns are publicly available for this campaign beyond those records.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness rests on the clarity of its problem-solution architecture. The decision to open with recognised dysfunction rather than product promise creates immediate audience alignment, particularly among professionals in the United Kingdom who had lived through the disruptions the film depicts. Distributing a single film asset across LinkedIn, YouTube, and WeTransfer concentrates the creative impact rather than diluting it across formats, a discipline that often correlates with stronger brand recall in technology advertising. The campaign's Clapboard Score of 64 out of 100 reflects creative work that executes its premise with confidence and lands its competitive positioning against Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet with clarity. Where the score finds its ceiling is in the breadth of differentiation: the surrealist comedy genre, while well-crafted here, is a tone that other technology brands have occupied, which limits the degree to which Whereby fully owns its creative territory. As Whereby's first brand campaign, however, the film establishes a tonal and strategic foundation that the brand can develop with subsequent work.
Whereby's 2021 campaign is a 30-second film created by Lucky Generals that dramatises video meeting dysfunction to position Whereby as a better alternative. Launched in the United Kingdom in May 2021, it was the brand's first above-the-line campaign and distributed across LinkedIn, YouTube, and WeTransfer.
Jeffrey Max of production company Fatal Farm directed the Whereby 2021 campaign film. Producer Giles Skillicorn oversaw production, which took place in Kyiv. The film was Whereby's first above-the-line creative effort, created with London agency Lucky Generals and launched in the United Kingdom in May 2021.
Lucky Generals used surrealist humour to validate widely shared frustrations with video meetings. Andy Nairn, founding partner of Lucky Generals, described video calls as 'traumatising,' and the creative approach amplified that feeling to make the brand promise of better meetings feel genuinely meaningful to professional audiences in the United Kingdom.
The tagline embeds the brand name linguistically while defining the product's purpose. Matt Gainsford, Strategist at Lucky Generals, developed the line so that Whereby functions as 'an actual place where better meetings happen,' turning a product name into a location and a promise simultaneously, as reported by Creative Salon.
The Whereby campaign directly targeted Zoom, Google Meet, and Skype as named competitors, according to Creative Director Charlie Hurst of Lucky Generals. In 2021, Zoom held approximately 50% of the video conferencing market and Microsoft Teams approximately 23%, according to solutions.trustradius.com, defining the landscape Whereby sought to disrupt.
The Whereby 2021 campaign received a Clapboard Score of 64 out of 100. The score reflects confident execution of its problem-solution premise and clear competitive positioning, while noting that the surrealist comedy tone — though well-crafted — is shared by other technology brands, limiting full creative ownership of the territory.
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