Xero launches new ad campaign via Emotive to deal with the financial elephant in the room
Xero, the leading cloud accounting software for small businesses, has launched phase one of its widest-reaching advertising campaign to date, in conjunction with APN News & Media (APN) companies including Emotive, Australian Radio Network (ARN) and Adshel.
The campaign addresses the burden that many small businesses have to deal with: the piles of paper receipts and invoices that often fill desks, back offices, and shoeboxes. Just like Xero has made accounting beautiful, the campaign turns paper receipts and invoices into objects of beauty: ‘Xerogami’.
Tapping into the combined power of the APN’s assets, the Xerogami campaign sees Emotive join forces with Adshel and ARN to create a truly integrated strategy for Xero across online video, radio and OOH that aims to entertain, educate and engage the core Xero audience.
Hero video content created by Emotive speaks directly to the target audience by emphasising the autonomy, power and freedom Xero affords small business owners, leveraging the wide reach of ARN and Adshel to accelerate distribution.
Says Trent Innes, managing director of Xero Australia: “Just like an idiom transforms the meaning of words, Xero has transformed the finances of 600,000 small businesses around the world into beautiful accounting. With Emotive, ARN and Adshel we created a campaign that used popular idioms and the concept of receipt origami, to make something beautiful out of the often chaotic paper-based accounting systems that many Australian businesses continue to use today.”
Says Simon Joyce, CEO and founder of Emotive: “Emotive led the core strategy and hero content creation for this campaign. Our challenge was to create an engaging content idea that would demonstrate how business finances could really be something insightful. Using a simple visual mechanic we were able to craft a content-first strategy that helped land the message and works seamlessly across social video, radio and outdoor.”
Says Ciaran Davis, CEO, APN: “The audience ARN and Adshel provides advertisers is unrivalled in power, combination and reach. When you overlay this with the content expertise and creativity by Emotive, you can see the sort of effectiveness APN assets can offer. The collaboration between Xero, Emotive, ARN and Adshel has led to this unique and high-impact campaign that delivers ease to business owners nationwide.”
The Xerogami campaign is accompanied by a number of activities from Xero’s retained PR agency Sling & Stone, to show how they can make their finances more efficient through cloud accounting.
Creative:
Xero
Shane Hurt – Design Lead
Clare Ralston – Producer
David Brand – Copywriter
Steve Benn – Designer
Ben Erskine – Partner Marketing Manager
James O’Connell-Cooper – Direct Marketing Manager
Ross Purdy – Project Manager
Emotive
Creative & Production lead
Mark Harris – Agency Creative Director
Hayley-Ritz Pelling – Agency Producer
Simon Robson – Creative Director
Kyra Bartley – Director
Jacqui Hudson – Lead Paper Artist
Outdoor: Adshel
Radio: ARN
PR: Sling & Stone
18 Comments
Hope they didn’t charge a concept fee:
http://www.advertolog.com/bpay/directmarketing/paperbillosaurus-campaign-6361555/
I love it.
Everything else is crap.
It hasn’t just been done before.
It’s been done hundreds and hundreds of times before.
Type in ‘print ad origami’ into Google.
Oh, and for ‘Make bills a thing of the past’ that ran in Australia not two years ago.
Writing scripts when Ricky gervais isn’t available.
Why can’t they focus on the things that don’t work before they start announcing anything else. When expense claims is actually a usable feature, payroll accruals are accurate and their bank rec is refined…maybe then they can toot their own horn. For now they’re just aggravating a lot of frustrated users….
Smells like a client idea to me.
Breaks the cardinal rule of advertising: borrow from popular culture, but don’t nick another adman’s idea.
The art director must have been locked in a cupboard too.
Layout is atrocious.
I thought this brand was quite cool until i saw this shit.
Oh I see. Xero has an in-house design to rip work off. What a lark.
“Our challenge was to create an engaging content idea”
Looks like they weren’t up to the challenge.
How original…
http://bit.ly/1QOzdyz
Beautiful software. Ugly ads. No wonder I left…
‘Told you we should have ordered takeaway….
layout is atrocious?
its some text and an image, centred, on a portrait A4.
not a flippin picasso
get a grip
Oh, so you’re the creative.
Sorry the comments on your first piece of work to make CB have been less that stellar. Here’s the feedback you would’ve got had you bothered to run the work past a decent Creative Director:
You’re right it doesn’t have to be a Picasso but it does have to be effective.
These are adshells. You’ve got far to much copy to capture anyone’s attention long enough to read the damn thing.
Also everything is in CAPS. Who’s idea was that?
But what do I know, 11:43.
Now go get a grip of last year’s award annual so you can rip off yet another idea.
Is the financial elephant in the room that Xero has just priced me out of my subscription and not paid a dividend in 8 years?
Copy school basics –
Never ‘Show and Tell’
‘Insights before the horse has bolted’ – show a horse
‘elephant in the room’ – show an elephant
Also, try to avoid confusing the reader:
Managing your finances should be this easy’ – show a hat
Emotive? What happened to M&C Saatchi?
http://www.campaignbrief.com/2015/05/global-online-software-company.html
Talk about confusing the reader…
It’s not a hat, it’s a cake!