Expensify's 2019 Super Bowl campaign starred 2 Chainz and Adam Scott in the world's first interactive music video viewers could scan with the Expensify app to
ARCHIVEExpensify Turns Super Bowl LII Into a Music Video You Can Expense
Expensify's 2019 Super Bowl campaign, titled "Expensify This," is an interactive music video starring rapper 2 Chainz and actor Adam Scott, created by agency JohnXHannes and directed by Andreas Nilsson of Biscuit Filmworks, in which viewers could photograph receipts appearing on screen using the Expensify app for a chance to win featured items or their cash equivalent.
The campaign launched in January 2019 in the United States, surrounding Super Bowl LIII, and marked a pair of firsts for the brand: Expensify's debut television campaign and its first Super Bowl advertisement. Built on the brand platform "You Weren't Born To Do Expenses," the work positioned expense management not as a back-office obligation but as the obstacle standing between people and the work they actually care about. By casting 2 Chainz as the video's central performer alongside Adam Scott, Expensify translated a functional software product into a culturally legible entertainment moment rather than a conventional finance-category demonstration.
The campaign operated across multiple formats simultaneously. Alongside the music video itself, Expensify ran a 30-second Super Bowl television commercial, digital and social extensions, out-of-home placements, and an interactive mobile activation tied directly to the app. The mobile mechanic was structurally central: receipts embedded throughout the video were scannable in real time, turning passive viewers into active participants and converting the video into what Executive Creative Director Hannes Ciatti of JohnXHannes described as "the world's first music video you can expense." The geographic focus was the United States, where Expensify competes in the increasingly crowded expense-management software sector against established platforms including SAP Concur and Certify. Clapboard rates this campaign 83 out of 100.
Expensify entered the 2019 Super Bowl advertising arena with a deliberate choice to abandon the conventions of the banking and finance category. The brand's strategic foundation, "You Weren't Born To Do Expenses," frames the product not as a feature set but as a liberator: remove the friction of expense reporting and employees can return to purposeful work. That insight required creative execution that felt nothing like financial software advertising.
The competitive landscape in the United States expense-management market at the time included dominant enterprise players such as SAP Concur and Certify, both of which commanded established corporate relationships and communicated largely through B2B channels and trade press. Expensify, by contrast, was pursuing a broader addressable audience that included small businesses and individual users, making a mass-reach moment like the Super Bowl a credible strategic lever rather than a vanity play. According to research cited by Verified Market Reports, cloud deployment represented a significant and growing share of the expense-management market, reflecting a broader SaaS migration that was reshaping how businesses evaluated and adopted tools like Expensify's in the United States.
The decision to commission a genuine rap track rather than a parody or pastiche was equally deliberate. Hannes Ciatti, Executive Creative Director at JohnXHannes, stated that the agency "engaged the best music writers and musical talent and developed a legitimate rap track," signalling that the creative ambition was to produce something 2 Chainz's existing audience would respect on its own terms. The interactive receipt mechanic extended this logic commercially: the music video was not merely entertainment but a live product demonstration designed to drive app engagement among precisely the consumers Expensify needed to convert. JohnXHannes brought to the project a track record that, according to industry reporting across sources including The Drum and Ad Age, included a Cannes Grand Prix and Emmy recognition across prior campaigns, lending the agency credibility to execute at Super Bowl scale.
Andreas Nilsson directed the campaign for Expensify. Nilsson, working through Biscuit Filmworks, brought a music-video sensibility that treated the production as a legitimate creative artefact rather than a branded content exercise. The result was a film that sat comfortably within 2 Chainz's established visual and sonic world while embedding the Expensify product mechanic at its structural core.
The creative team at JohnXHannes, led by Executive Creative Directors Hannes Ciatti and John McKelvey, developed the campaign around a central creative tension: expense management is one of the most mundane tasks in professional life, yet the Super Bowl is one of the highest-attention advertising environments in the United States. Resolving that tension required a format that was inherently watchable on entertainment terms. The music video format provided that resolution. Ciatti described the mechanic directly, calling it "basically the greatest and most fun product demonstration ever" — a characterisation that captures the dual function the creative needed to serve.
The production spanned multiple formats without fragmenting the central idea. The 30-second Super Bowl television spot, the full-length music video, out-of-home creative, social content, and the interactive mobile activation all operated as extensions of a single coherent concept. Receipts embedded throughout the video were real and scannable, meaning the production design itself carried functional weight rather than serving purely aesthetic purposes. The collaboration with 2 Chainz was not a straightforward celebrity endorsement; the campaign brief required co-creating a track credible enough to exist outside its advertising context, and the casting of Adam Scott provided a tonal counterpoint that emphasised the brand's accessibility beyond any single cultural demographic. As reported by The Drum and Complex, the campaign generated attention across both entertainment and marketing press in the United States, reflecting the degree to which the creative crossed category lines.
ARCHIVEExpensify's "Expensify This" campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 83 out of 100, reflecting strong structural effectiveness across creative originality, strategic coherence, and execution craft. No independently verified post-campaign performance data — including specific figures for app downloads, receipt scans, brand-awareness lift, or return on ad spend — is publicly available for this campaign from named third-party sources.
What can be assessed structurally is substantial. The interactive receipt mechanic created a direct, measurable call to action embedded within a Super Bowl broadcast, a format that typically produces passive viewership. By requiring audiences to open and use the Expensify app during the video, the campaign converted a brand-awareness moment into a product trial event in the United States. As reported by Marketing Dive and The Drum at the time of launch, the campaign attracted significant press coverage across both advertising and entertainment verticals, extending earned media reach beyond the paid Super Bowl placement itself.
The campaign also achieved a meaningful creative milestone for the finance category. According to reporting by Ad Age and iSpot.tv, "Expensify This" was the brand's first television commercial and first Super Bowl advertisement, establishing a new creative register for Expensify in the United States market. The production quality, talent calibre, and interactive mechanic collectively set a benchmark that distinguished the brand from category competitors including SAP Concur, which has historically communicated through more conventional B2B channels. JohnXHannes, the creating agency, carried into the project a body of work that according to The Drum and Ad Age included a Cannes Grand Prix and Emmy recognition across prior campaigns — credentials that positioned the agency to deliver work capable of sustaining scrutiny in the United States' most competitive advertising environment.
Expensify's "Expensify This" is the brand's first Super Bowl advertisement, launched in the United States in January 2019. Created by JohnXHannes and directed by Andreas Nilsson, it starred 2 Chainz and Adam Scott in an interactive music video where viewers scanned receipts using the Expensify app to win prizes.
Andreas Nilsson of Biscuit Filmworks directed the campaign. Nilsson brought a genuine music-video aesthetic to the production, working alongside JohnXHannes Executive Creative Directors Hannes Ciatti and John McKelvey to ensure the film functioned as credible entertainment while demonstrating the Expensify product through its embedded interactive receipt mechanic.
Receipts were embedded throughout the music video. Viewers in the United States could photograph those receipts using the Expensify app for a chance to win the featured items or their cash equivalent. The mechanic turned passive Super Bowl viewership into an active product trial moment directly tied to the app.
JohnXHannes, a New York-based creative agency, created the "Expensify This" campaign. The agency's executive creative directors Hannes Ciatti and John McKelvey led the work. JohnXHannes had previously earned industry recognition including a Cannes Grand Prix and Emmy, according to reporting by The Drum and Ad Age.
Clapboard rates the "Expensify This" campaign 83 out of 100. The score reflects strong creative originality in the banking and finance category, coherent strategic execution built on the "You Weren't Born To Do Expenses" platform, and production craft that earned cross-vertical press coverage across the United States advertising and entertainment media.
Expensify used the Super Bowl to reach a mass United States audience beyond its existing B2B base, directly competing for attention against established expense-management platforms such as SAP Concur. The brand platform "You Weren't Born To Do Expenses" required a high-attention environment to reframe expense software as a cultural and lifestyle proposition rather than an enterprise tool.
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