TD Ameritrade, Havas Reveal The Inner Lamb
- by Larissa Faw , February 28, 2015
Last October, TD Ameritrade launched "You Got This," a $100-million campaign under its new creative agency of record, Havas Worldwide. This March, the online brokerage firm and Havas are introducing the latest iteration under this campaign called “Lamb.” The spot, voiced by comedian Chris Parnell, shows that even the least confident creature in the animal kingdom -- the lamb -- can be confident thanks to the financial institution.
"Inner confidence can manifest itself in strange ways," says Jim Hord, ECD Havas Worldwide New York. "In earlier spots for TD Ameritrade, it took the form of a talking trophy or a yellow headband. In this spot, confidence takes perhaps the most unusual form of all: a talking lamb. Possibly the least confident creature on the planet. But when a meek, fluffy critter suddenly finds his confidence and advises you to give TD Ameritrade a call, it's probably wise to listen to him."
Still, just as the old adage advises against working with children and animals, Havas learned that filming animals is never easy. "The biggest challenge in the production of the spot was getting the lamb to stay still," says Hord. "It would constantly bob its head up and down, side to side. We needed a good shot on which to animate the mouth and we only had a few moments to choose from where the lamb didn't move."
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The spot runs across TV including ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, NBC Prime, ESPN, ESPN2, Golf Channel, History, Discovery, H2, AMC, USA, MSNBC, CNN, and cable news, as well as via digital channels CNBC, Kiplinger, Yahoo, CNN Money, and MarketWatch. Also, the campaign will be supported via social media, including YouTube. Additional spots will launch this spring.
Havas Worldwide was named TD Ameritrade's agency of record in May 2014. TD Ameritrade spent $250 million on advertising in fiscal 2014, up from $239 million year-over-year, according to recent financial filings.
The new trend for commercials is having product ads revolve around animals and pets. At first I felt that this idea was foolish, having talking animals in a commercial was a little odd. The more that I saw this the more that I realized that marketing companies we realizing that consumers were responding to seeing their most beloved animals in a commercial, it brought a warm feeling to your heart. It was smart on TD Ameritrade’s part to put a lamb in this commercial, an animals that know as rather timid is being seen as having confidence can really appeal to a consumer. One thing that an ad agency probably has to be careful about though is choosing the right animal to appeal to a possible consumer, it is expensive and can often be difficult to work with animals, so marketers need to make sure that they picking the right animal or pet and have them conveying the right message in order to make the commercial a success.