Office Depot is ‘Taking Care of Business’ (Again)

Except maybe for Walmart, no brick-and-mortar retailer is getting squeezed by e-commerce quite like office supplies—which would explain why Staples was just sold and Office Depot (and sibling OfficeMax) has a new marketing campaign.

The Boca Raton, Florida-based retailer’s latest effort recasts its brand platform as the place to get the job done, whether you’re a small business or not, with the familiar (more on that below) slogan “Taking Care of Business.” So committed to the notion that it’s now its tagline and part of its logo—a subtle way of reinforcing what differentiates the retailer’s customer service and customer experience.

The fully integrated national campaign—with TV and radio ads, social media, digital and email marketing, inserts and direct mail—will take full advantage of the iconic Seventies tune, “Taking Care of Business,” which was the signature hit of the Canadian rock band Bachman Turner Overdrive (so iconic that even Elvis Presley was a fan).

The tune “was instantly recognizable by all our customer segments and gave us distinct brand differentiation,” stated Diane Nick, Office Depot’s senior vice president of marketing. More than that, the theme “also conveys that everyone has business needs to take care of regardless of the inevitable twists and turns in today’s fast-paced, non-stop world,” she added.

In fact, the brand has used the tune in the past—in 1992, when shoulder pads and manila folders were all the rage—and it was also the title of a 2006 book celebrating its first 20 years in business.

Now it’s modernizing the slogan Office Depot is positioning itself as the “go-to resource” for today’s busy professionals and consumers, from business owners to moms, who are “Taking care of Back to School” in the current leg of the campaign. “Who takes care of you? Office Depot/OfficeMax. We take care of you, so you can take care of business,” the TV commercials say to the familiar tune.

The TV ads feature workers from various occupations and roles, highlighting how they manage to take care of business despite life’s obstacles. Of course, Office Depot is there to help them do it with its products and, especially, services that can’t be “delivered” in a cardboard box from Amazon—which has already felled Staples, now reorganizing into a smaller footprint and more focus on customer experience.

And even while not using the tune, the “Taking Care” theme extends to promos such as this nod to how the brand services laptops and computers:

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