Outside the Box: Vipps MobilePay Defy Tech Ad Cliches
Vipps MobilePay
Makes Difficult Easy
Our first Nordic Ad Of The Week is a delightful Danish commercial from Vipps MobilePay. The brand formed from last year’s merger of Vipps and MobilePay, to create the first unified mobile wallet for the Nordic countries. The brand’s hero product, Vipps MobilePay Box, allows easy creation of mobile wallets (“boxes”) to collect payments – a real boon for small businesses, consumers and fundraisers alike.
So, a tech company has a merger to talk about and a new product to show off. That’s usually not a recipe for an exciting ad. Too often, in fact, it’s an open invitation for a brand to send prospective customers to sleep with self-obsessed, message-heavy material. Fortunately Vipps MobilePay and agency &co. are doing things very differently. They’re demonstrating the product for sure, and the ad is indeed strongly branded. But their primary mission here is entertainment.
The ad shows parents watching a school gymnastics rehearsal. Talk turns to fundraising for the school summer fete. Nobody is exactly enthused. But one Dad is more positive – he could just set up a Vipps MobilePay Box. And that’s when things get surreal, as the very unathletic Dad hits the gym mat himself, wowing judges and audience with a stunning (and hilarious) display of ribbon, floor and parallel bars expertise. As he finishes his routine, the MobilePay Box fills up with notifications – reminding us what this display is for – and the ad finishes with the campaign tagline, “Makes Difficult Easy”.
In a finance and technology market full of unambitious, sensible advertising, Vipps MobilePay dare to stand out, and deserve the very positive response they get in our tests. With Test Your Ad panels in all Nordic markets we were able to rate the ad among a Danish audience sample, and it returned a strong 4.4-Stars. That shows high potential for brand growth over the long term. Its short-term scores are even more impressive, with 95% recognising the brand and an exceptional short-term Spike Rating. On every measure, the ad is a huge success.
So what have Vipps MobilePay got so right here? They have a high quality product, but they’ve remembered that what cuts through is feeling, not facts. Put the brand in front of the public, and put on a show for them, as Orlando Wood recommended in his latest IPA Effectiveness Week speech. This ad takes that advice literally. The show it puts on includes lots of juicy right-brained elements to get the audience paying attention, like a keen sense of place, a likeable lead character, a ton of non-verbal communication and a cultural reference in the form of Bryan Adams’ classic soundtrack.
Vipps MobilePay and &co. have made sure their ad is strongly branded and features the product in a hero role. But they’ve treated those things as the foundations of a great ad, not the sole purpose of one, and not been afraid to entertain for commercial gain. More tech brands – in the Nordics and beyond – should learn that lesson.
Note: the version of the ad featured on this page is dubbed in English.