Staples is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year and the retailer is certainly a household name. But the retailer’s chief marketing officer Bob Sherwin believes that familiarity may be working against the brand when it comes to communicating just how much the business has evolved.
The company has grown far beyond its roots as an office-supply retailer, serving Fortune 500 companies and enterprises with everything from supply chain and delivery to janitorial supplies, break room services and print and marketing solutions.
Now, the CMO is focused on changing perceptions of what Staples can do. To help spearhead this message, he is using the brand’s iconic Easy Button as the centerpiece of a new campaign.
“Staples is a trailblazer, being the first office superstore and a part of so many people’s lives, whether that was their back to school shopping or helping them run a business or all the things you need to run a household,” says Sherwin. “That’s a great starting point. The challenge and opportunity is that over those 40 years, that has been our core, but we have evolved so far beyond just that.”
Prior to joining Staples, Sherwin held senior marketing roles at Wayfair, McKinsey and IBM. Brand Innovators caught up with Sherwin from his office in Boston to discuss the brand’s 40th anniversary campaign, growth opportunities and how his background as a business strategist informs his approach to marketing. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How has the business evolved over the last 40 years?
So much of what we do is serving Fortune 500 companies, not really just through our stores, but through deep partnerships and relationships. We are delivering to their buildings, we have drivers in their buildings, we are helping them with their printed collateral and marketing services, helping make sure their lobbies are spick and span and their break rooms are fully stocked with coffee supplies and snacks and beverages.
These are really big parts of our business and are a big reason why we’re doing so well as a company. But most people – including business decision makers, sometimes who are actually clients – don’t know about a lot of our capabilities and our differentiators. They associate us with what we were, not really what we are. So that was the starting point: We want to shift perceptions. It’s not an awareness challenge for us. It’s about telling the story of all these great categories we play in and our unique capabilities that very few of our competitors have.
What are some of those differentiators?
One is our supply chain network. We have over 30 fulfillment centers strategically placed around the country and 200 final-mile delivery points that those ship to. That allows us to hit 98% of the country, next day. Businesses have come to rely on Staples once they realize this and partner with us because they know things are in stock with Staples. If they’re out of something and they need a replenishment, they know that item that they’ve always bought from us will be in stock and it’ll be there tomorrow.
I spent the first 10 years of my career helping companies with operations and supply chain. It was a big part of what I did at my last company. I know how hard it is to do and how unique it is to do what Staples does with their supply chain. The other big dimension that is very unique to us is we don’t just have a great website with tons of products. We also have a really big team of experts that are specialized in different categories.
We have experts in print and marketing services, janitorial products and different verticals. When you think about all the cleaning products you need to have a K-12 school up to standards, it’s actually a very different set of solutions than if you’re running a hospital. There’s different compliance and standards and needs. It’s not just, “Here’s a website, go at it, we have it all.” It’s, “Let’s understand your business, let’s understand your traffic flows and compliance and regulatory needs and then design a program that is custom built for you.”
How did you turn that business story into the new campaign?
We wanted to think through a campaign that would be memorable, somewhat funny and attention-grabbing, but more importantly, really unique to Staples. How can this be something that if any other brand threw their label on, it just wouldn’t work? How do we tell this story in a fun way that is really tied up in what makes Staples unique? We kept iterating on ideas and thought the Easy Button has to be part of it. This is a great brand asset that is uniquely Staples.
But we came up with this idea that Easy is easy to explain, right? Working with Staples is easy. But how fun is it if we actually bring in the Easy Button’s alter ego or arch nemesis, the Hard Button, and show a juxtaposition of what life could be like if you didn’t work with Staples – the hard way – or if you do work with Staples – the easy way. It really taps into a human truth: we all get really accustomed to accepting the status quo, dealing with tons of vendors that aren’t actually easy to work with.
What we loved about this juxtaposition is it works for so many categories we play in, as well as allowing us to showcase our unique capabilities: supply chain, experts, just basically the ease of working with Staples.
Is this campaign part of a transformation from direct-to-consumer to B2B?
We’ve been doing this for a long time: 75% of Fortune 500s work with us and a lot of those are on bespoke contracts. If they’re doing enough volume with us, we’ve tailored solutions for them. We have negotiated pricing based on their volume. Everything they’re receiving from Staples is through our own fleet of trucks and delivery drivers because that gives them a level of service that they need.
We’ve been doing this for 20 years. A lot of that is done through our Staples Business unit. We have a different website for that where you can be self-serve or you can have an account team helping you if you’re at a large enough scale and need a custom solution. That’s not new. It’s just we haven’t told that story to the world.
Who are you targeting with the campaign?
The primary target is business decision-makers. It spans across those verticals, whether that is a chief procurement officer, office admins or facility managers. We want to make sure they’re aware of these subcategories that Staples plays in and what makes us unique. We’re also trying to make sure we’re hitting those frontline teams, the people that would actually be using and benefiting the most from Staples.
We want business decision-makers to think, “Wait, why aren’t we working with Staples?” Or, if we are, “Are we using them in that way?” And then a little bit of, “Wow, I need to do my part in making my team’s lives easier.” A lot of times, those frontline folks are influencing the decisions on who to work with and what partner to choose.
What categories are you focusing on?
For the first phase of this platform, we’re really trying to focus on categories that we’re really strong in, that we’re doing great business in, but have lower awareness. Break room is a really big one for us and a very big addressable market. Janitorial and sanitation supplies are another massive market.
And print and marketing services aligned with party planning is another area. People think of us sometimes as a copy center, which is less relevant in 2026. For printed collateral, whether that’s window treatments for a retail business, signage or getting printed apparel with your brand logo on it, we’re one of the bigger players in supporting some of the largest, most iconic consumer brands.
How important are Staples’ physical stores to the story?
Stores are a big differentiator for us versus some of our competitors because a lot of them don’t have that. They’re just online and just have delivery. Because we deliver 98% of the country next day, there’s a lot of times you don’t need a store. But if you do need it today, we have those. Our print services in stores are also a huge part of it. Not only can you get things same day in many cases, you can also work with a print expert.
If you have a rough idea of what you’re trying to do but you need help, you’ve never designed something or you don’t know how to use the different templates and tools to create something, our stores are amazingly well equipped with really strong print experts.
You’ve described this as a platform. What comes next?
As we get closer to the prime holiday season, we’ll have a few assets that are more seasonally relevant. The nature of it will be the same Hard versus Easy platform, but it’ll be more around holiday preparation, gift giving and hosting parties. It’ll skew more consumer during that time period, but also businesses as they’re preparing for the holiday rush. And then as we go into the New Year, we’ll have our next batch of creative treatments rolling out in video format, back to a lot of the similar storytelling that we’re doing right now, skewing a little bit more business than consumer.
How has your background shaped the way you approach the Staples business?
I view myself as a general manager and a business strategist first who happens to go be really deep in marketing. Some of that was marketing and sales at McKinsey, but I really spent 10 years building that function out at Wayfair, really going deep on all the elements of marketing. This opportunity and this ability for us to pull this campaign together came from a recognition – mine included – that we have a really strong business, but we need to provide more air cover to our sellers and our website to tell that story.
That was very clear to me: This is not an awareness problem of Staples overall. This is a perception problem of what we can do. Helping size up these different markets and think about where we actually have the right to win has helped us prioritize which subcategories and which solutions to feature most prominently. There are literally hundreds of things that Staples does. In the past, we tried to give everything a little bit of attention and nothing really moved the perceptions or awareness for any of them.
Here, we’re still talking about a lot of things that Staples does that are surprising to people, but we’re really focusing on the ones that are really differentiated. That business judgment and critical thinking on what’s going to really move the business furthest is supported by the background I have as being more of a strategist in all that beyond just being a marketer.
