Apple subsidiary FileMaker has released a new ad campaign touting the custom app development tool, with a video and website featuring cast members from 'The Office' in a mock documentary about a highly successful beet farm powered by a FileMaker-produced app.
The new ad, running for almost three minutes, stars Kate Flannery, Paul Lieberstein, and Leslie David Baker, best known for their roles as Meredith, Toby, and Stanley in the NBC adaptation of 'The Office.' In the Farm Time FileMaker campaign, the trio appear as farm workers featured in a news report about the farm's success.
The farm, which harvests beets and delivers them to customers via drones, is managed by a single Beet Lord custom app. Shown operating on an iPhone, iPad, and an iMac, the ad explains the app tells employees tasks they need to accomplish, as well as managing records relating to produce, handling customer orders, and deliveries.
The video on YouTube includes links to the Beet Lord website, which turns out to be a microsite dedicated to the ad campaign. The site offers a short story about the commercial as a way to explain how the mythical business uses FileMaker, as well as select customer reviews, a brief demonstration on how to create a FileMaker app, and a free trial.
The Apple-owned service released its latest edition of FileMaker, version 16, in May 2017, with the update including new features such as Layout Objects and Cards to help with app creation, improved cURL and JSON integration, and support for OAuth 2.0.