• by Larissa Faw , June 28, 2018

Intuit is a brand that many people around the world are unfamiliar with. Many people know and use Intuit’s products, like TurboTax, Quickbooks,and Mint, yet few understand the master brand behind these platforms. 

As a result, Intuit partnered with agency Phenomenon to craft its first master brand story. The goal was to express the capability of the full Intuit ecosystem to help a rising tide of self-employed people thrive.

“For many, finances are still a blind spot in the information age, and many people don’t want to talk about it,” says Jason De Turris, Chief Strategy Officer, Phenomenon. 

The agency’s strategy relied on “offense, not defense” by “finding a way to draw people into the anxious topic” says Jenn Cook, group brand director, Phenomenon. "The challenge was getting people to pay attention to and embrace a topic that ranges from taxes to invoices.”

The resulting “A Giant Story,” a four-minute animated film, launched the Intuit brand mission of "Powering Prosperity."

The internal launch leveraged its well-known and admired CEO, Brad Smith, who enabled employees globally to make Intuit donations to Kiva, a platform that raises money to support entrepreneurs and the self-employed around the world. 

"We created the Intuit Giant to show how Intuit’s ecosystem of products helps every consumer, self-employed or small business owner make more money with less work, confidently. That commitment remains core to who we are and the promise we make to customers every day," says Lauren Stafford Webb, head, global corporate marketing, Intuit. 

The film was animated “to make it more relatable,” says Cook. It’s garnered over 21 million views since Intel published it in February.

From there, Intuit staffers used their own social media channels to broadcast their mission to support the self-employed economy. The goal was to reach “1 billion impressions,” says De Turris. "Gaining that kind of reach through digital and social content is difficult because we have to consider that no one wants to build your brand, they want content that shares their values and builds their own brands.”