Creating generational wealth is a milestone ambition for most Americans, but it’s never felt more out of reach. While baby boomers are considered the wealthiest generation in history, for younger generations, the journey to reaching financial independence isn’t as simple as it was 50+ years ago. Owning a home is harder than ever, and many families are unable to create the financial legacy they strive to leave behind.
As a challenger brand to legacy financial institutions, we wanted to show people there’s a better way to manage your money that isn’t reliant on the old ways of banking. During the 2024 NBA All-Star Weekend, we saw an opportunity to steal the ball from traditional banks, and position SoFI as a bank that truly cares about our members.
We partnered with 5x NBA All-Star, Jayson Tatum, to share his journey to generational wealth—drawing a connection between the generational shift that is happening in the game, and the next generation of banking to help people get their money right.
The brief was to frame SoFi as the ultimate teammate to help people take their money game to the next level. In order to be successful, we needed to drive next-level awareness among NBA fans, tap into the cultural firepower of basketball, and drive record trial of our Checking and Savings product.
To empower NBA fans to realize their generational ambitions, we partnered with Jayson Tatu, not only because he’s a generational talent, but because he wants to create a generational impact in the community. We had Jayson share his story of creating generational wealth—from the work he put in, to the support of his mother—to show that the right tools and (financial) partner are key to making your money work as hard as you. To align with Jayson’s story and make an impact, we created the Generational Wealth Fund, to help single-parent families put down payments on homes in his hometown of St. Louis.
We started by conducting both quantitative and qualitative research to understand NBA fans, and the magic behind the game of basketball. Through this, we found that the NBA has a younger and more diverse fanbase than any other professional sport in America: 54% are diverse, 1 in 3 are women, and 2 in 3 are GenZ/Millennial. NBA fans are locked in, socially engaged and religiously competitive. Most importantly, they share the same ambitious spirit, hustle and motivation to reach for the top.
Given the massive reach of the NBA on social media (2X+ all other leagues combined), and connection that players have with the community beyond the court, we knew TV alone wouldn’t be enough to connect with this audience. We needed to reach fans where they were, and with activation they would care about.
The 2024 NBA All-Star Weekend was the ideal cultural moment to announce our partnership with the Jayson Tatum. To kick-off the campaign, we launched our “Generational Ambitions” :60s TV spot featuring Jayson Tatum during the weekend games, followed by social collabs with the @NBA, creator partnerships, and media integrations across all touchpoints. To make a broader impact in the community, we announced the creation of the Generational Wealth Fund in partnership with Jayson Tatum—donating $1M to help single-parent families in his hometown of St. Louis put down payments on homes.
And finally, we helped all NBA fans experience the next generation of banking with an epic APY, baller welcome bonus and a $10K giveaway each week during the season—showing that SoFi can help you realize your ambitions. The campaign launched during All-Star weekend and ran for the remainder of the regular NBA season, reaching millions of NBA fans in linear TV, CTV, on-court/in-game branding, digital video, social media, creator partnerships, media integrations, web, display, and email marketing.
We’ve continued to expand our Generational Wealth Fund campaign with additional key partnerships. This Spring we partnered with Elaine Welteroth and birthFUND to offer maternal health services, financial aid, and educational content to help more achieve their ambitions of growing their families and building wealth for generations to come.
Most recently, SoFi teamed up with LA Chargers quarterback and SoFi member Justin Herbert to help make members' financial ambitions a reality by offering up to $25k to lucky winners that sign up for a free SoFi credit score to start their generational wealth building journey.
The brand hit a record 9.3% unaided awareness among NBA fans and 7.2% national unaided awareness during the campaign launch, marking a 40% increase YoY.
Our NBA and Jayson Tatum partnership totaled 967M total impressions during the first two weeks at launch, including earned visibility accounting for more than 630M impressions.
We secured top-tier national media coverage in the AP, CBS Mornings, Bleacher Report, and Sports Business Journal, reaching millions more in collaboration with the @NBA on social with 91% positive sentiment.
Our content drove more than 10.6M engagements across social platforms, and our TV Spot with Jayson Tatum drove 2.7X the search response rate over all other financial companies.
Our TV campaign contributed to more than 18% of all new Checking and Savings volume around the announcement, and the $10K Sweepstakes drove thousands of new members to get their money right with SoFi.
Our ultimate goal with this campaign was to help more people gain access to the tools they need to build generational wealth. Through our marketing and promotional efforts, we were able to increase the volume of new SoFi checking and savings accounts, granting more people access to our industry leading 4.5% APY (10x the national average, with no balance caps), putting money where it matters the most - in our members’ pockets.
