A message based around simplicity and putting Canadians’ minds at ease about their finances worked for Wealthsimple when it was first finding its foothold, and it believes that same approach will drive adoption for its recently acquired tax-filing service.
A new campaign was developed in-house and includes three spots that see biblical, literary and mythological characters confronted with comedic dilemmas as they file their taxes using Wealthsimple’s new offering, which came online after it acquired SimpleTax in 2019 and rebranded it Wealthsimple Tax this year.
As a result, Wealthsimple is realigning SimpleTax with the rest of its offerings, as one that makes financial management easier for people.
“Especially this year, taxes are confusing and can be a little scary. There’s a lot of uncertainty with things like CERB and working from home complications,” says Mike Giepert, ECD at Wealthsimple. “We thought that humour would be a good way to make things feel less stressful.”
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And while evoking Frankenstein’s monster to allay fears may seem counterproductive, Giepert says the spots – which debuted during Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast, have been garnering encouraging responses on social media – enough so that he says the brand plans to reuse the format in the future.
Wealthsimple is in the middle of a wave of expansion, Giepert says, that includes products such as Wealthsimple Trade for stock trading, Crypto to handle currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, and Cash for peer-to-peer payments.
“We’re mostly seen as an investing platform, so letting people know we’re expanding into a new category is a challenge,” says Giepert. “The fortunate thing is we have such a great existing user base to build from.” WealthSimple is hoping to retain the more than one million people who used SimpleTax last year, while bringing on new users that will be enticed by a brand that has been successful driving growth in other areas of financial management.
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Investing in this kind of marketing push for a product isn’t new for the company, which aired a spot for Wealthsimple Trade during Game 4 of the NBA finals, and followed that up with last year’s Super Bowl spot that promoted the history of the brand and its founder with sights set on bringing a slightly older audience into an offering that has typically done best with millennials.
Big, mass awareness pushes were a big part of Wealthsimple’s marketing strategy as it was first building awareness, and has continued to be important even as its goals have shifted towards promoting new and expanding products.
“Any time we’ve made big investments in building our brand, we’ve seen really positive results on the product level,” says Giepert. “This is just letting people know that the Wealthsimple product offering has matured and is more than what they thought it is.”
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