The Super Bowl is a key moment in time for Intuit TurboTax, as it takes place during a critical moment in tax season. In 2020, Intuit TurboTax executed a cross-channel campaign to amplify and drive engagement around the brand’s Super Bowl commercial, which highlighted TurboTax’s brand value with an engaging music video with a catchy song and simple dance that reminded consumers that “All People Are Tax People.” Given the fun, fresh nature of the commercial creative, Intuit TurboTax made a strategic decision to leverage TikTok to drive massive engagement around the ad, encouraging consumers to join the fun and do the dance, which we dubbed the #W2Step.
In early 2020, TikTok was still considered to be an emerging social platform, from a brand marketing perspective. At the time, it had over 800 million active users worldwide, and was the 4th most popular free iPhone app download in 2019. Given the growing popularity of this platform, the Intuit TurboTax team tapped into the consumer insight that dance videos are one of the most popular categories of user-generated content on TikTok, and leveraged that insight to drive massive consumer engagement around the dance-focused creative featured in the Super Bowl commercial.
The team used several tactics to effectively translate the commercial from television to TikTo, including:
Giving the dance a fun, catchy name -- the #W2Step -- using wordplay to strengthen the connection that the commercial established between taxes and dances. The #W2Step includes a reference to the W-2 (the most common tax form, with most Americans receiving a W-2 in the weeks preceding the execution) and a nod to the classic “two step” dance move.
Teaming up with TikTok influencers who shared their unique versions of the #W2Step, to further inspire the TikTok audience to show off their moves
Investing in a sponsored hashtag and additional media (e.g., In-Feed Ads) within TikTok, to drive reach and awareness within the platform
Launching the TikTok hashtag challenge on Super Bowl Sunday, to maximize the moment in time and capitalize on our cross-channel Super Bowl marketing campaign
The goal of this execution was to drive consumer engagement around the TurboTax “All People Are Tax People” Super Bowl commercial. The campaign fulfilled our objectives, and exceeded our goals, delivering the following results:
Delivered over 3 Billion global impressions
Generated over 634K UGC video submissions
Received a total engagement rate of 18%
Significantly outperformed platform benchmarks
