The Expert
Sorry Adrien Brody.
Now taxes is drama free.
Taxes.
Just the word triggers stress and anxiety. They can feel dramatic, but when you have a TurboTax Expert handling everything for you, they take all the drama out of taxes.
So it only seemed natural to hire two-time Oscar winner Adrien Brody, in his first role since The Brutalist, to prove that not even the most dramatic actor alive can bring drama to TurboTax.
For the Super Bowl, we went all in, stretching this simple idea into a fully integrated campaign made up of a cinematic two-minute film running in theaters and online, prestige-style film posters across the country, teaser trailers in social and digital, exclusive press, and more.
Creative Direction, Creative, Integrated Campaign
Ranked Top Ten Super Bowl Campaign
Adrien Brody took his role as The Expert very seriously, training daily with real TurboTax Experts. For him, it became less on-the-job experience and more a religious one.
We captured the method behind Adrien’s madness through the lens of photographer Norman Wong, turning the resulting portrait series into a prestige-style film poster and then plastered it across New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, Austin, and Chicago.
I can handle that for you.
A week before Super Bowl, we dropped the first teaser. An actor playing an actor, dramatically unraveling in real time, and a subtle homage to Rick Dalton in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
When do they cry?
On game day, after weeks of online speculation, we dropped the first of three Super Bowl spots. In it, Adrien arrives on the TurboTax Store set, obsessively trying to dial in the perfect amount of drama.
Your dog’s gonna die.
Our second Super Bowl spot is where things start to unravel. Adrien’s interpretation of The Expert takes a deeply unhinged turn, revealing just how dramatically wrong he’s calibrated the role.
Dials it up right?
Right before halftime, our third Super Bowl spot completely went off the rails as Adrien finally unveils his grand dramatic vision for The Expert. Needless to say, it doesn’t exactly go the way he, or Janet or the Director, hoped.