Slack's chief marketing officer explains why its first national ad campaign as a public company centers on its response to the coronavirus pandemic

• The workplace chat app Slack is releasing its first national advertising campaign as a public company - a public service announcement to support people on the frontlines of the coronavirus.
• Its 30-second spot thanks doctors, researchers and other responders and highlights how companies are already using Slack to coordinate their efforts.
• Slack has increased its sales and marketing spending as it faces competition to acquire new users, spending over 57% of its fourth-quarter 2019 revenue of $181.9 million on advertising.
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The workplace chat app Slack is releasing its first national advertising campaign as a public company - a public service announcement supporting people on the frontlines of the coronavirus.

It's releasing a 30-second spot thanking doctors, researchers and other responders and highlights how companies like the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub and ID.me are using Slack to coordinate their efforts. At the end, it directs viewers to a landing page about how Slack can help.

"We noticed that there were organizations that were trying to respond to this crisis using Slack, and thought, 'What a moment for us to be able to get the word out that Slack was available to help,'" Slack's chief marketing officer Julie Liegl told Business Insider.

The ad was developed in a week by the company's marketing team and is set to run across linear TV channels including news programs on NBC, CNBC and CNN, connected TV and video-on-demand platforms like Hulu, and publisher sites including The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg on April 1, Liegl said.

Slack is among other remote working companies that have seen a boost due to the coronavirus

Along with Zoom, Microsoft and Cisco, Slack has spiked in popularity in the past few weeks as people transition to working from home to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Many organizations working to combat the pandemic already use Slack for remote work, which is why the company is rolling out features aimed at them like free access to Slack's paid plan for three months, removing its regular caps, Liegl said.

It is also offering one-on-one consultations to answer questions and share best practices for working remotely on its platform. The paid plan allows for app integrations with the likes of Google Docs or Zoom, she said.

Although Slack first saw usage increase mainly for its free version, it's had a big increase in paid customers as well, adding 9,000 new paid customers since the beginning of February.

Slack is spending more on marketing as competition heats up

Slack has increased its sales and marketing spending as it faces heated competition to acquire new users. The company spent more than $103 million toward its marketing expenses for the fourth quarter of 2019, versus $78 million in the third quarter - over 57% of its revenue of $181.9 million.

The uptick in ad spend comes as Microsoft launched its own messaging product Teams for free to customers of Office 365 and a new ad campaign to promote it in January, CNBC reported.

Liegl said Slack's new campaign is not designed to drive any business metrics, although it is spending more on advertising to promote the company.

"It's really not trying to sell anything, just raise awareness of how [we can] specifically help your offering," she said.

Watch the spot below: