The challenge
PagerDuty is the operations engine behind the tech we rely on every day, like Netflix, Zoom, and Chipotle. As a trusted partner for these brands, PagerDuty is driven by their mission to revolutionize operations and deliver seamless digital experiences — which is why they built the Operations Cloud platform.
Primarily known for its Incident Response on-call product, PagerDuty's other products remained under the radar, with aided awareness hovering around the low 70s. As the company pivoted to promote the Operations Cloud to CIOs and CTOs, it faced the challenge of competing not only with emerging solutions but also with established giants in the space. We needed to get on the radar of Enterprise decision-makers and drastically change how they viewed the brand’s capabilities.
Growing awareness & shifting perceptions
To help spread the word about this broader platform, we set out to create a bold brand campaign to start candid conversations with C-level leaders. We knew it would be challenging to reach Enterprise decision-makers and drastically change how they viewed the brand’s capabilities.
The path to success with measurable outcomes
Exploring the mind of a Chief Technology Officer
Leaders today are under enormous pressure to drive growth and cut costs. Operational excellence is no longer a “nice to have” — it’s essential for survival.
Yet, when researching for the campaign, we learned many companies were stuck on their path to digital transformation. Leaders described their operations as a tangled mess of homegrown solutions and one-too-many tools, leaving teams buried under inefficient workflows.
A recessionary environment had dialed up the urgency to intervene. Leaders felt this was finally the moment for an overhaul. With that insight, we knew we could craft a campaign that would resonate emotionally and point them to a platform that could help. Our strategy? Deliver urgent truths about the state of business through frank headlines and a bold, activation-ready palette.
Building a flexible creative toolkit
"Operation Intervention" made a bold case for change, positioning PagerDuty as the catalyst for modernizing operations. The campaign opened a direct dialogue with decision-makers, urging them to ditch outdated systems and embrace a modern operations stack. This was key to driving brand awareness and reinforcing PagerDuty’s leadership in IT operations.
Leveraging insights from our research, we paired urgent, attention-grabbing headlines with a striking new color—Volt—that evokes emotion and cuts through crowded feeds. Our visuals, inspired by instruction manuals and emergency communications, balanced familiarity, empathy, and a touch of humor.
Together, these elements formed a cohesive visual and messaging system designed to scale across diverse channels—from digital ads to high-impact OOH and events—ensuring maximum reach and engagement.
Breaking down the execution and impact
Value propositions paired with our urgent, attention-grabbing headlines were central to our messaging strategy. By combining these elements, we highlighted PagerDuty’s offerings while capturing the attention of our target audience in contextually relevant spaces where we could snag C-suite’s attention—industry events, paid social (Reddit, LinkedIn), display ads on tech and business sites, PR articles, videos, and more.
We created a multi-touchpoint campaign that guided leaders through discovery, consideration, and decision-making, delivering a full-funnel communications experience that drove measurable results.
Throughout the campaign, we continually optimized for better performance, looking for ways to improve engagement and keep the journey moving forward. Paid social videos performed especially well, outpacing our Value/ROI campaign by 37%.
Our paid efforts also drove significant mobile traffic, with the bulk of session visits coming from paid social. By quickly refining the user experience, we boosted session time and kept engagement high throughout the campaign.
The "Operations Intervention" campaign for PagerDuty was the top-performing brand campaign in the brand’s history of campaigns.
Boosted PagerDuty's brand awareness among CIOs and CTOs by 11pts, reaching 81% across the US, CA, AUS, NZ, JP, UK, and IE. Now, 64% of CIOs in these regions have PagerDuty in their consideration set. Even more compelling, 85% of our target audience agrees or strongly agrees that "PagerDuty is a leader in IT operations," putting us several points ahead of our top competitor, ServiceNow.
The campaign also had a major impact on PagerDuty’s marketing pipeline, with traffic to the PagerDuty website doubling since the launch of "Ops Intervention." Over 146,000 page views and 52.8 million impressions drove a noticeable spike in branded search volume.
PagerDuty also saw a 20% increase in the number of enterprise customers (revenue > $500K), contributing to an 8% year-over-year revenue growth. Plus, website engagement rates in Q2 were significantly higher compared to Q1, showing just how effectively we captured and maintained audience interest.
These results highlight the campaign's ability to drive real business growth and reinforce PagerDuty's position as a critical tool for organizations looking to optimize their operations. We successfully shifted PagerDuty from a product to a platform built for modern enterprises, catapulting their next phase of growth.
