Canadian fintech KOHO has chosen Taxi as its new creative agency after completing a review prompted by the resignation of previous creative agency Ogilvy, which won the TD account in September.
The RFP included “all of the top players” in Canada, as well as some from the US, said CMO Alexandru Otrezov. Taxi scored highest across the board, but it was the senior people on the team —”They’re people we would hire at KOHO,” he said—and the agency’s willingness to move fast that separated Taxi from the others.
“They seem to be the most agile out of all the agencies, in terms of how fast they can execute things,” he said. “We move fast at KOHO. Otrezov said he wants to have a new brand campaign in market by the end of the first quarter.
“KOHO is an amazingly entrepreneurial, customer-centric organization, and we look forward to helping them continue to grow across Canada,” said Taxi president Emma Toth in a release. “They are an incredibly passionate and ambitious team with a singular goal. We can’t wait to get started.”
Last spring, KOHO ran a mostly digital campaign by Ogilvy called “The Museum of BS.” Otrezov said that the campaign performed well in testing on TV, so KOHO will be spending more on the medium. And while the “BS” campaign had some edge to it, he wants to push the brand even further.
“I think the space calls for something more bold and authentic,” he said, noting that “The Museum of BS” was meant to get people asking questions about what their current banking means to them. “But at the end of the day, what we’re looking for is much more—stirring up deeper emotion [about] what is happening in this world today.”
But the brand will not be offering quick fixes or easy solutions to big problems for people who feel financially anxious. “What we can promise is a bit of control in the world that everyone feels like we’ve lost a little bit,” he said. “And control starts with questioning the status quo of the current industry.”
KOHO is thinking less about specific competitive brands, and more about the established financial system dominated by the big banks, he said. “We are trying to inform the users about their choices, and that ‘Hey [KOHO isn’t] the same old bank that your parents or grandparents bank with.’”
How will they do that? “We don’t know yet,” he said. “We’re still in the early process of the campaign.”
