Who: Intuit QuickBooks Canada, with Juniper Park\TBWA for creative, Bolt Content for production (Jordan Dashner directing), Studio Feather and Oso Audio for post-production.
What: “The Chase is Over,” a campaign promoting the accounting software company’s online accountant offering, which it says enables a more “seamless collaboration” between accountants and their clients by automating time-consuming tasks and streamlining workflows.
When & Where: The campaign is in market now, running until early next year using online video (both a :30 and :15), digital display and social.
Why: Puja Subrun, head of marketing for Intuit QuickBooks Canada, said the campaign has two primary objectives: Broaden awareness of the QuickBooks Online Accountant offering, and educate accountants and bookkeepers about how its tools empower them to better support the small businesses they work with.
How: QuickBooks has found success employing what Subrun describes as “quirky, breakthrough creative”—embodied by its global “Journey to Success” and “The Pay Face” campaigns—to showcase its benefits, and it has adopted that approach with its latest campaign.
The creative approach here is based on the insight that gathering all of the necessary information needed to help their clients run their business—bills, receipts, files, etc.—can be time-consuming and problematic for accountants.
Built around the idea “Transform your workflow, transform their business,” the spots demonstrate that an accountant’s secret weapon is their advice, and QuickBooks’ online accountant feature lets them spend less time chasing down information, and more time empowering their clients to focus on their business.
The spot opens on a mysterious accountant named Frank who says that before he got his clients on QuickBooks, he was forced to constantly track them down for necessary information. The spot then cuts to scenes of Frank popping up in unlikely places—like inside the closet and a photocopier—to remind his client to provide necessary items like receipts and bank statements.
The spot closes by adopting a more functional approach, with a shot of the QuickBooks software in action followed by the grateful business owner telling Frank he’s a legend. But Frank has already gone, leaving only a slowly spinning office chair in his wake.
And we quote: “When [accountants] have all the information they need in one place, they’re real difference-makers, able to help small businesses succeed,” said Subrun. “And using QuickBooks Online Accountant will help them do just that.”