• by Les Luchter , May 17, 2022

Three months after Larry David shined as a cranky Luddite in FTX’s Super Bowl crypto ad,actor Will Arnett takes on the naysayer mantle today in B2B platform Commercetools’ first-ever campaign.

In a series of spots (:15, :30, :50 and :90) from agency Walker Sands, Arnett plays an anthromorphized version of a legacy commerce platform (think Salesforce, Oracle or Adobe), who pooh-poohs current ecommerce tools like shoppable social, gaming app integration and inflight commerce, and instead suggests that his company “leave the web and go back to catalogs.”

“Is your legacy tech struggling to keep up?” asks Commercetools.

Jen Jones, the company's chief marketing officer, said Arnett’s “naysayer” represents a character in C-suites whom “we’ve all worked with before,” adding that “brands across all industries are held back when they use outdated technology. By bringing some humor and pizzazz to B2B technology, we hope to create disruption in the industry and continue to inspire creativity alongside our customers.”

Commercetools said the campaign is running globally via video, digital and social media, with billboards and airport signage also to be used in the U.S. The brand has also given its Naysayer his own Twitter page.

The specific target audience is made up of non-technical decision-makers within B2B, B2C and D2C brands who “currently feel limited by their commerce capabilities and want more flexibility for their checkout, browsing and overall shopping experiences,” Commercetools told Marketing Daily.

Commercetools, which has been around since 2006, competes against Shopify in what the company calls “headless commerce” -- meaning that “the efront end of the website is separated from the backend.”

Shopify, however, mostly serves small-to-medium D2C businesses, Commercetools said, while the latter “typically works with larger enterprises starting around $500 million in gross merchandise value per year, including brands like Ulta, Burberry, Lululemon and more.”

The legacy players, meanwhile, “require customers to use a suite of solutions for their commerce stack, whereas Commercetools provides over 300+ APIs that brands can pick and choose from.”