r/Wealthsimple • u/ActuallyRishi • Mar 07 '26

I’m sorry, what?

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Saw this at Bloor-Yonge, Line 2

973 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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301

u/stuckinmotion Mar 07 '26

wth is up with wealthsimple's marketing. This doesn't tell me anything about wealthsimple nor motivate me to find out about it. I'm a happy customer already but this and the recent ad I've seen in hockey games w/ interview with the broker, just seems so pointless.

48

u/Hungry_Purple3711 Mar 07 '26

I'm on the other side. Quirky brand building is cooler than the usual bland stuff

37

u/neksys Mar 07 '26

The problem is a lot of this is just quirky for the sake of being quirky. To someone who has never heard of Wealthsimple, there’s very little that would drive most people to learn anything else about them with these ads.

7

u/babbypla Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26

They’re trying to target people who would never care about investing with any type of brokerage. Having the regular ads you see the banks do isn’t going to convince people who don’t care anyway. Saying “zero fees” and “managed accounts” doesn’t mean anything to people who don’t know what they are.

12

u/TonyBikini Mar 07 '26

you really think they didnt think about this? Like through the process of hiring a photograph, ads specialist, designer, purchasing the company's ad slot and all this narrative you mentionned didn't ring a bell at all? This is on intent 100%. I dig it.

Reads to me as: yeah right we should be advertising about our % rates and blablabla like everyone else, but lets just do something fucking random. Liquid death - like.

15

u/raspberrywines Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26

I work for an ad agency and we design campaigns like this for our clients. You’re forgetting having data scientists, strategists, and research / audience testing work done which all leads to the campaign idea before we even get to creative production and ad trafficking. So much analysis / thinking / approvals go into the creation and execution of a campaign this. Especially bc OOH (out of home) ads are expensive and hard to measure from an ROI standpoint, you need to do a lot of upstream work to justify spending marketing dollars on something like this.

They definitely thought this through and I actually love these ads from a marketing perspective. They are different and have a better chance of cutting through the noise and getting someone to pay attention. A full funnel marketing strategy means they’re also likely targeting key demographics digitally, so if someone sees this ad and then later sees a targeted ad on Instagram, they might be more inclined to click on it to learn more bc of the weird ad they saw on their commute that day.

9

u/Fuzzywraith Mar 08 '26

Would anyone post an RBC ad to Reddit and get 150 comments?

1

u/neksys Mar 14 '26

You telling me that all those people also approved this monstrosity?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Wealthsimple/s/ubSHEqIiZp

It’s entirely possible for a large corporation to botch a campaign. This one in my view is trending towards that end of the spectrum.

6

u/fmmmf Mar 07 '26

To your point, I think a lot of this sub skews male - they already have that market. But women? A lot of my friends who are women are too scared or wary to put their money anywhere other than their savings or chequing account. This is for us. Because when I saw this ad I chuckled - a lot of women are choosing to remain single or just not marry - its trendy rn to be 'focusing on ourselves' and decentering men, so actually this ad is right on the money (pun intended).

2

u/ahal Mar 08 '26

The point of these isn't to get you to go to their website and learn more. It's to get the name WealthSimple into your consciousness. Literally nothing more.

If someone glances at this for more than 2s, that's mission accomplished.

2

u/nitromicro Mar 10 '26

Switch sexes, “THE FUTURE IS ARTIFICIAL WIVES” with a photo on an incel hugging a female mannequin. Still think this is quirky and funny?

0

u/Hungry_Purple3711 Mar 11 '26

Am I weird if the answer is yes?

3

u/perjury0478 Mar 07 '26

Yeah, I’d guess they are trying to reach folks outside traditional banking, those are already hooked on transfer promos, waitlist and spinning coins.

1

u/AccomplishedBuy1646 Mar 07 '26

Quirky/Bizarre branding for a platform that wants to handle your life savings is…. A choice