The second year of Now This Is Taxes was about building on what worked in year one: snapping taxpayers out of what they thought taxes were and showing them the future of filing.

This time, Gen Z became a core audience, but without alienating everyone else. So we built the campaign around a kind of cultural dog whistle: Gen Z-coded artists reimagining songs beloved by basically everyone.

Because authenticity matters to Gen Z, we partnered with musicians The Beaches, Ravyn Lenae, and Toro y Moi to create full-length tracks and quietly released them ahead of the campaign on Spotify and Apple Music, completely unbranded. And because we couldn’t resist, we used a Shiny Toy Guns for a small business owner taking his pizza shop intergalactic.

For this year’s free filing spot, we even turned our running disclaimer gag into a karaoke-style banger that somehow generated real requests for a full release. Maybe next year.

Award-winning directing duo Los Perez brought their signature visual energy to the campaign, helping expand TurboTax’s world beyond traditional TVCs into a broader ecosystem of social and digital films with a level of craft the brand hadn’t previously embraced.