Charles Schwab

Charles Schwab

Con­gress dereg­u­lat­ed the bro­ker­age indus­try in 1975, paving the way for dis­count bro­kers. Charles Schwab was a pio­neer in mak­ing it cheap­er and eas­i­er for more peo­ple to invest in the stock mar­ket than ever before.

We won the account in a pitch against Wieden & Kennedy, TBWA Chiat/Day, and FCB.  Agency billings went from $50 mil­lion to $130 mil­lion dur­ing the four years we had Schwab. (It was the longest rela­tion­ship with any agency in their his­to­ry up to that point.)

A large part of the suc­cess came from tak­ing a seri­ous sub­ject and mak­ing it more approach­able for con­sumers. In the process we cre­at­ed a dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ty for Schwab as a down-to-earth way to invest with the best inter­ests of its cus­tomers in mind.

Charles Schwab | “Ringo”

The “Cre­at­ing a World of Smarter Investors” cam­paign was a pos­i­tive empow­er­ment strat­e­gy. Thanks to Schwab, peo­ple who you would­n’t expect were finan­cial­ly savvy. Ath­letes dropped finan­cial or invest­ment terms with ease at unpre­dictable moments.

To broad­en the con­cept we thought about a song­writer who is so finan­cial­ly astute that he even rhymes in finan­cial jar­gon. We con­sid­ered Aero­smith and Bob Dylan before hit­ting on Ringo. As it turned out he was a great choice because of his screen per­sona as the “dumb Bea­t­le.” This spot ran pre-game on the Super Bowl with “Retire­ment Home” (below).

And no, the guy on the couch is not Neil Young.

This spot won a New York Fes­ti­vals Sil­ver Award; Finan­cial Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices First Place; and Lon­don Inter­na­tion­al Adver­tis­ing Awards Finalist.

Charles Schwab | “Retirement Home”

Schwab’s redesigned web site launched a Retire­ment Plan­ner tool that allowed cus­tomers to move seam­less­ly from one step to the next through the retire­ment plan­ning process. The com­pa­ny want­ed to fea­ture the plan­ner in a spot to run pre-game on the Super Bowl.

Most Amer­i­cans are unpre­pared for retire­ment, and this insight got us think­ing about peo­ple who may retire suddenly—athletes. There were a lot to choose from that year. In addi­tion to the ones in this spot, Michael Jor­dan, Wayne Gret­zky, John Elway and Stef­fi Graf also retired. While we were in pre-pro­duc­tion, Mike Dit­ka announced his retire­ment after being sacked as the coach of the 3–13 New Orleans Saints. He gave us a great end button.

This spot won a Cannes Sil­ver Lion; New York Fes­ti­vals Sil­ver Award; Lon­don Inter­na­tion­al Adver­tis­ing Awards Final­ist; Finan­cial Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices First Place; and Adweek Best Spots of the Year.

Charles Schwab | “Sally Field”

A few months after the Super Bowl, Schwab bought time on the Acad­e­my Awards tele­cast. This nat­u­ral­ly got us think­ing about famous Oscar moments. One of the best known was Sal­ly Field­’s gush­ing accep­tance speech for Places in the Heart (1985):

She was actu­al­ly mak­ing a humor­ous ref­er­ence to dia­log from her Oscar-win­ning role in Nor­ma Rae the pre­vi­ous year, but most peo­ple missed the con­nec­tion. In the public’s mind, her line had mor­phed into “You like me, you real­ly like me!” We saw no rea­son change that, and even exag­ger­at­ed it:


Like “Retire­ment Home,” this spot was a depar­ture from the cam­paign; Sal­ly does not spout invest­ment terms. Instead, her speech was used to under­score Schwab’s egal­i­tar­i­an cus­tomer ser­vice. Enter­tain­ment Week­ly wrote, “On a night of bloat­ed self-impor­tance, Field’s tongue-in-cheek approach is a winner.”

The com­mer­cial aired twice dur­ing the Oscars tele­cast before set­tling into a reg­u­lar net­work rota­tion. This spot won a New York Fes­ti­vals Sil­ver Award; Finan­cial Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices First Place; and Lon­don Inter­na­tion­al Adver­tis­ing Awards Finalist.

The cam­paign of “Ringo,’ “Retire­ment Home,” and “Sal­ly Field” won Sil­ver in the New York Fes­ti­vals; the Midas Award; Finan­cial Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices First Place; and a Lon­don Inter­na­tion­al Adver­tis­ing Awards Finalist.

Charles Schwab | “Detectives”

For much of its his­to­ry Schwab ben­e­fit­ed from a bull mar­ket that drew a broad­er range of investors into stocks. When the dot-com bub­ble burst, online trad­ing dropped off 33%. Schwab was penal­ized by peo­ple’s mis­trust of Wall Street. Bro­kers, along with lob­by­ists and car sales­men, are among the least trust­ed occu­pa­tions in the U.S. Like any oth­er sales­per­son, bro­kers earn more when they sell more. Schwab, how­ev­er, offered objec­tive advice and its finan­cial advi­sors did not work on commission.

A new campaign—“The per­son you trust­ed most”—leveraged con­sumer resent­ment over bro­kers who offered self-serv­ing advice.