Tangerine works the emotive angle

Tangerine wants to tell Canadians they work hard for their money, so their bank should too.

The online bank has launched a compelling new spot, “Hard Work,” which shows people in various occupations experiencing some of the more annoying, heart-wrenching or unpleasant parts of the job.

The vignettes include a homecare worker giving an elderly man a bath, a vet pulling on an arm-length glove to examine a cow, a daycare worker getting puked on, and a masseuse working on a man with a really hairy back. The spot is set to a stirring military cadence (left right left) and ends with the line, “You work hard for your money. Does your bank?”

“Our purpose is to help Canadians live better lives by helping them make smarter decisions with their money, and we wanted to produce a piece that demonstrated our purpose,” said Brenda Rideout, chief strategy officer at Tangerine Bank. “It’s very emotive. We wanted to create truly relatable and memorable moments, so the vignettes capture real-life moments. They’re emotional, they’re humorous, they’re even dramatic, but they’re not over the top.”

The campaign, created by John St., is the bank’s first mass campaign since 2014, when it introduced its new name (Tangerine was formerly ING Direct) and tagline, “Forward banking.”

The new spot positions Tangerine as “human” and empathetic to hard-working Canadians, said Rideout.

“The competition is very much focused on convenience and technology features,” she said. “Canadians expect technology features from us and I think we deliver on that. So we wanted to be known as the bank with a purpose.”

The ad is airing on TV nationally throughout the year and is being shown in Cineplex theatres. The campaign also includes out-of-home and digital, and Tangerine is looking at experiential components.

“The first phase is television, but [the campaign] has amazing footage and amazing reach, so there’s lot more we can do with it,” said Rideout.

PHD handled the media buy and the song was created by RMW.