PagerDuty Brand Campaign: Solving Problems Before They Happen
I wrote the PagerDuty homepage after we developed the campaign. As users scrolled, the pages below were exposed.
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The Challenge
PagerDuty operates behind the scenes of the modern internet, powering incident response for companies that can’t afford to go down. When systems work, no one notices. When they fail, the consequences are immediate and public. The category is both essential and invisible. Most buyers don’t think about incident response until something breaks, and by then it’s too late.
PagerDuty needed to make the value of proactive planning visible. Not just as a technical capability, but as a business imperative.
The Strategy
We shifted the conversation from reaction to anticipation. Instead of focusing on what happens during an outage, the campaign positioned PagerDuty as the system that prepares teams before anything goes wrong. The idea reframed incident response as something that starts long before the incident itself.
The message was simple: the best response is the one you’ve already planned. This turned PagerDuty from a tool used in crisis into a platform built for control.
Creative Platform
The campaign centered on the idea that real reliability isn’t reactive. It’s premeditated. Systems don’t fail unexpectedly. They fail unprepared. The creative made planning feel powerful and controlled. It positioned PagerDuty as the infrastructure behind that control.
Execution
WEB COPY
I wrote the website after we developed the campaign to ensure continuity between campaign messaging and online communications. It was a very collaborative process with me and the CMO literally sitting down together to work out the final draft.
OUT OF HOME
Bold, irreverent headlines paired with colorful, graphic designs were unignorable around the Bay Area. Messages built context around the tagline, “Solutions before problems.”
Digital + Social
Digital and social placements extended the message to engineering, IT, and operations leaders, reinforcing the idea that preparation is the real differentiator. The work spoke to the pressure of responsibility and the value of foresight in high-stakes environments.
Results
The campaign helped shift perception of PagerDuty from a reactive incident tool to a proactive platform for operational readiness.
- Over 36 million total impressions in eight weeks.
- .12% click-thru rate
- Saw new users to the website increase by 21%.
Awareness expanded beyond core technical audiences, and the brand gained stronger recognition among enterprise decision-makers who increasingly see uptime as a business function, not just an engineering concern.
Why It Worked
Most companies think about failure in the moment it happens. PagerDuty owns the moment before. By focusing on anticipation instead of reaction, the campaign elevated the product from a response tool to a planning system. It aligned with how high-performing teams actually operate, not how marketing usually describes them.
The message wasn’t about fixing problems. It was about never being surprised by them.
About Division of Labor
Division of Labor is a San Francisco advertising agency specializing in brand and launch campaigns for companies operating in complex, technical categories. We help translate invisible systems into clear human value, turning infrastructure into something people can understand, trust, and prioritize. PagerDuty partnered with Division of Labor to show that the most important work happens before anything goes wrong.
Campaign Overview
PagerDuty partnered with Division of Labor to launch a brand campaign focused on proactive incident response and operational readiness. The work repositioned PagerDuty as a platform that helps teams plan for and prevent failures before they occur, building awareness and expanding its relevance across both technical and business audiences.