Perk Launches First-Ever CTV Ad Campaign Highlighting Hidden Work Costing Businesses $1.7 Trillion a Year
LONDON, NEW YORK – February 2, 2026 – Perk today launched its first-ever CTV ad campaign aimed at exposing the hidden work costing businesses more than $1.7 trillion a year, marking the next phase of the company’s expansion beyond travel since rebranding from TravelPerk.
“Breakthroughs... almost”, co-created by Perk and agency AnalogFolk and produced by Untold Fable, promotes Perk’s new global brand platform – which unites travel and spend management into a single experience – by taking a satirical swipe at the annoying admin work that saps business productivity.
The campaign imagines how history’s greatest innovators, from Isaac Newton to Marie Curie, might have fared if their breakthroughs had been derailed by booking trips, filing expenses, coding invoices or chasing approvals.
Perk, the AI-native platform for travel and spend management, calls these tasks “shadow work” – invisible, non-core work employees do outside their main job. New research by Forrester Consulting, commissioned by Perk, found that shadow work costs businesses in the US, UK, France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands $1.7 trillion annually, with employees losing around seven hours a week and 11 minutes of focus each time they switch back to core tasks.
The campaign brings to life Perk’s new global brand platform – developed in partnership with AnalogFolk following the company’s rebrand in November 2025 – through bold storytelling and humour. It marks the latest phase of Perk’s evolution beyond travel and highlights its broader mission to use AI to eliminate hidden, time-wasting work and give teams time back for higher-value tasks.
Jada Balster, Perk VP Marketing said: “With the Perk brand launch, we knew we wanted to do something bold and show up differently to traditional B2B. Since last summer, we’ve been shaping this idea with AnalogFolk, and it was clear we were onto something that felt right for the story we wanted to tell. This campaign brings that ambition to life, showing how Perk brings travel and spend together to remove the shadow work that gets in the way of breakthroughs.”
Anna-Louise Gladwell, Managing Director, AnalogFolk, said: “‘Breakthroughs... almost’ was an opportunity to make a universal, yet invisible, problem visible through humour and bold storytelling. By imagining how history’s greatest innovators might have been derailed by everyday admin, the campaign highlights the real cost of shadow work in a way that’s entertaining, relatable and impossible to ignore.”
Untold Fable produced the 60-second spot in collaboration with Femi Oludigbolu, an award-winning writer-director from South London. The film was brought to life through a blend of in-camera techniques and visual effects developed with VFX studio Coffee & TV. Alongside the hero film, the campaign also includes key stills and bespoke music composed by producer Ife Ladi.
Kate Tancred, CEO and founder of Untold Fable, said: “Using our diverse global network, we managed the film’s end-to-end production, from bringing in an incredible director whose perspective shaped its bold, cinematic vision, to sourcing a period makeup and wardrobe crew with credits on shows like The Crown and Pride and Prejudice to ensure every era felt authentic and richly detailed. Each scene was enhanced with in-camera effects and Coffee & TV’s VFX. We were lucky to work with exceptional talent across every part of the process, and working with Femi, an incredibly talented and collaborative director, made it genuinely enjoyable for everyone involved.”
The new campaign, supported by comms planning agency Craft Media and media agency Goodstuff, will be rolled out on CTV, digital, social and paid media channels across the UK, Germany and the US, marking the latest phase in Perk’s rollout of its global brand platform and rebrand as the platform powering real work.
Since November, Perk has also supported its new positioning with high-profile OOH placements, including the NASDAQ in Times Square, featured in leading print publications such as The Wall Street Journal and launched digital activations across social media, podcasts and other channels.
You can watch the ad by visiting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sq_tKzQMyE
About Perk
Perk (formerly TravelPerk) is the intelligent platform for travel and spend management, built to eliminate the hidden, manual tasks that drain productivity and morale - Perk calls these ‘Shadow Work’. By automating travel bookings, expenses, invoice processing and events, the platform gives teams back time to focus on real work, with real impact. Trusted by more than 12,000 companies worldwide - including On Running, Breitling and Fabletics - Perk is tackling the 7 hours of lost productivity per employee each week, a $1.7 trillion problem revealed in The Cost of Shadow Work report. Founded in 2015, the global company combines innovation, control, and simplicity to transform how businesses work today and in the future. Perk’s mission is to power real work by removing the invisible tasks that slow teams down.
About AnalogFolk
AnalogFolk is an independent global next generation creative group. We combine creativity, strategy and technology to help brands grow in a fragmented, fast-moving world.
We are proud to be a strategic partner to brands such as Nike, HSBC, L’Oréal, Meta, Johnnie Walker and Costa Coffee, and to have been awarded both Campaign Magazine’s Global InnovationAgency of the Year and a Contagious Magazine Pioneer. We have 300 folk in Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia with specialist capabilities across strategy, creative, technology, CX, design and content production.
About Untold Fable
Untold Fable is a tech-powered production company on a mission to drive greater diversity, equity and inclusion within advertising. Untold Fable leverages a global network of 8,000+ filmmakers across 100+ countries to create authentic, culturally relevant content for brands including Nike, L’Oreal and Bumble. Part of the AnalogFolk Group, the global company champions diversity and inclusion at every stage of the ad production cycle, giving brands and agencies access to technology that enables them to track production crew diversity, ensuring measurable progress towards their DE&I goals. The company has offices in London and New York.
CREDITS
Agency: AnalogFolk
Client Partner: Robert Scobie
Executive Producer: Natalie Dobbin
Creative Director: Jake Doran
Creative: Alex Scott
Creative: Holly Gordon
Strategy Director: Leo Baker
Production: Untold Fable
Media agency: Goodstuff
Colour / Grade: Coffee & TV
Comms Planning Agency: Craft Media
Perk: Rachel O’Callaghan
Perk: Georgia Hatlapa
Perk: Jada Balster
Perk: Dylan Boscolo
Perk: Jack Davies
Director: Femi Oladigbolu
Senior Producer: Ben Londesbrough
Director's Rep: Andre Reid
Director's Assistant: Shakira Newton
Head of Production: Becci Ride
Production Manager: Andre Wooz
Production Assistant: Effe Hozaifeh
Production Assistant: Ashani Roberts
Factory: Sound
Jack Hallet: Sound Designer
Ife Oladigbolu: Composer
Photographer: Johnny Fonesca
Stills Digital Technician: Ryanna Allen
Photography Lighting Tech: Joe Smith
Photography Lighting Tech: Frederick Stisted
1st Assistant Director: Luke Goodrich
2nd Assistant Director: Oliver Waters
Location Manager: Francesca Marago
AD Runner: Marlon Cang
Director of Photography: Deon Zan Zyl
1st AC: Jamie Oliver Lai
2nd AC: Matthew Hollis
Steadicam (AR Rig): Gary Kent
DIT: Rob Gilmour
Playback Operator: Von Adam
Playback Op Assistant: Max Power-Richards
Editor: Simon Rodgers
VFX Supervisor 1: Callum Wellby
VFX Supervisor 2: Angus Wilson
VFX Supervisor: Jorg Schulz-Gerchow
VFX Producer: Thom Godsill
Sound Operator: Duncan Ettie
Gaffer: Ryan Monteith
Lighting Desk Op: Freddie Meunier
Production Designer: Anna Rhodes
Set Decorator: Abbie Kornstein
Art Director: Ashley Dando
Art Dept Asst / PC Buyer: Lindsay Potter
Props Master & Art Tech Vehicle Driver: Jason Bradley
Props Assistant: Nick Hancock
Props Assistant: Kristell Excell
Graphic Designer: Abby James
Costume Designer: Buki Ebiesuwa
Costume Assistant: Yann Seabra
Costume Assistant: Halyna Gali Humeniuk
Costume Trainee: Amelie Binder
Hair Artist: Cynthia De La Rosa
Hair Assistant: Kelly Poulter
Make up Artist: Sophia Grace
Make up Assistant: Imani Ramsey
Make up Assistant: Siena Powloski
Catering: Showbites