2025 Football Campaigns – State Farm | Clapboard Ad Archive

Sluggish - Wealthsimple | Clapboard Ad Archive — archive collection thumbnail

Sluggish - Wealthsimple | Clapboard Ad Archive

Wealthsimple’s Sluggish campaign, crafted by BaconX and launched in the United States in 2025, confronts the pervasive frustration of modern money management through a strikingly original metaphor that positions the consumer as a tiny, slimy, invertebrate Sisyphus—a slug endlessly pushing uphill against invisible, immovable forces. This metaphorical framing captures the grinding, often discouraging experience of financial progress in a turbulent economic landscape without resorting to literal depictions of stress or typical financial clichés. Instead, the campaign embodies the problem through symbolic imagery that resonates on a visceral level, aligning with what Clapboard identifies as FORMAT#3—Symbolize the Problem—where analogy supersedes direct narrative or testimonial formats. The slug, an unconventional and relatable figure, humanizes the emotional toll of personal finance challenges in 2025, inviting empathy and recognition rather than alienation or oversimplification. Wealthsimple’s strategic positioning here is clear: it acknowledges the uphill battle consumers face and implicitly offers itself as the patient, understanding ally that supports incremental progress rather than promising overnight transformation or unrealistic financial miracles. This tonal honesty and humility distinguish the brand within the crowded finance category, where competitors often lean heavily on aspirational messaging or technical sophistication. The campaign’s choice of a film medium allows for an intimate and immersive storytelling experience that connects emotionally with an audience fatigued by traditional financial advertising and yearning for authenticity and approachability. By tapping into a cultural insight around widespread financial anxiety and feelings of stagnation, Wealthsimple through BaconX delivers a narrative that feels both contemporary and timeless, eschewing flashy jargon or complex explanations in favor of a simple, yet profound symbol that captures the essence of the consumer’s journey. The campaign earns a 78/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. Sluggish matters to the industry because it demonstrates how finance brands can break through by embracing vulnerability and metaphorical storytelling to reflect real consumer emotions, signaling a shift away from transactional messaging toward empathetic brand experiences that validate the slow, often unglamorous path to financial wellbeing.

Pay Your Own Way - PayPal | Clapboard Ad Archive — archive collection thumbnail

Pay Your Own Way - PayPal | Clapboard Ad Archive

Pay Your Own Way sees PayPal and BBH double down on the everyday realities of modern payments, spotlighting the product’s flexibility against a landscape of competitors positioning on convenience and seamlessness in the finance category. Launched in the United States in 2025, the campaign abandons abstractions and celebrity intrigue for a clear, demonstration-first approach—what Clapboard’s taxonomy would classify as FORMAT#1—Demonstration—delivering a brisk, montage-driven narrative that cycles through multiple real-world contexts: paying in-store, completing ecommerce purchases from the sofa, enabling pay-over-time installments, and framing even the most private, relaxed moments (like completing a payment from the bathtub) as opportunities for frictionless transactions. The choice to show, rather than tell, speaks directly to an audience tired of payment tools that don’t fit their day-to-day lives, a point PayPal uses to frame itself in opposition to the more technical, developer-led Stripe ecosystem, Apple Pay’s walled garden, and the social play of its own Venmo property. By visibly championing user autonomy and embedding the idea that PayPal lets consumers dictate both the how and where of transactions, the campaign intensifies its promise of user-centric innovation at scale, targeting not just fintech early adopters but a mainstream swath of mobile-first, digitally confident spenders seeking ultimate convenience. BBH’s creative not only serves as a product demo but as an assertion of relevance in a payments market where form factor, platform, and personal context are increasingly blurred. Three media assets—leveraged across online and offline channels and drawing more than 1.5 million views—amplify the core message and prompt direct action, steering viewers to PayPal’s site, sign-up portals, and active social feeds, reinforcing a throughline of accessibility and ongoing engagement beyond the 30-second spot. The campaign positions PayPal as a utility that transcends single-format payment and aspires toward lifestyle integration, using relatable scenarios to migrate the brand from transactional touchpoint to active daily enabler. Clapboard rates this 64/100. At a time when control, speed, and flexibility define consumer choice in financial services, PayPal’s Pay Your Own Way campaign is a clear signal to the category that product demonstration, grounded in lived experience, remains one of the most effective strategies for building trust and top-of-wallet preference.

Everywhere You Want to Be - Visa | Clapboard Ad Archive — archive collection thumbnail

Everywhere You Want to Be - Visa | Clapboard Ad Archive

Visa’s Everywhere You Want to Be campaign, developed with Anomaly and launched in the United States in 2025, reinvigorates the brand’s iconic promise for a new era by connecting its relevance to the identities consumers are building, not just the destinations they hope to reach. Central to the campaign is the high-concept film Typewriter, which follows a young woman whose purchase of a vintage typewriter sparks a series of imagined lives—whether as a celebrated screenwriter, an acclaimed restaurateur, or a travel zine entrepreneur—each one unlocked by Visa’s trusted payment platform. The narrative pivots on the insight that, in the finance category, what matters most to consumers is progress: the accumulation of small, purposeful actions that move them incrementally toward their goals, both big and small, and Visa’s role as the enabler of that journey. By relaunching during the Oscars broadcast, the campaign leverages one of televised culture’s most aspirational moments, seamlessly aligning the protagonist’s ambitions with the cinematic promise that defines Hollywood’s highest stage, while reinforcing Visa’s broader association with major cultural and sporting events. Supporting the flagship film, a trio of 15-second spots distills the brand’s utility into everyday contexts—travel, commerce, and digital shopping—demonstrating Visa’s global presence, leading-edge security, and reliability as bedrock enablers for personal achievement and daily convenience. This approach sits squarely in Clapboard’s FORMAT#6—Benefit Causes Story taxonomy, hinging on the idea that Visa’s tangible product benefits serve as the creative catalyst for visualizing a spectrum of ambitions, rather than framing a problem-solution arc or a direct competitive duel; here, the benefit—ubiquitous, secure transactions—drives the action by transforming a single purchase into a portal of possibility across multiple life paths. In a category shaped by legacy brands doubling down on premium status, inclusivity, or transactional convenience, Visa’s narrative asserts a human-centric positioning by mapping its utility to personal aspiration and self-efficacy, reinforced visually and thematically throughout the campaign’s assets. The campaign earns 63/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. As payment brands navigate a fragmented landscape of platforms and consumer expectations, this campaign signals the rising importance of emotional resonance and imaginative storytelling paired with practical reassurance in building enduring market relevance.

Pierce - RBC | Clapboard Ad Archive — archive collection thumbnail

Pierce - RBC | Clapboard Ad Archive

RBC’s 2024 campaign Pierce, created in partnership with Battery, capitalizes on the global fever of the Paris Summer Olympics to reposition its International Money Transfers as the enabler of borderless ambition, framing the entire banking experience as a springboard for Olympic-level dreams. Targeting a Canada-based audience with a distinctly outward-looking lens — from globally mobile professionals to immigrants and the Canadian diaspora — Pierce leverages the symbolic power of the Games to recast a transactional finance product as a conduit for transcending geographic and personal limits. Rather than detailing features or demonstrating process, the campaign employs a narrative construct deeply rooted in what Clapboard’s taxonomy would classify as FORMAT#9 — Symbolize the Benefit — using the Olympic motif as a metaphor for the magnitude of customers’ aspirations and implicitly promising that RBC’s infrastructure will carry their ambitions wherever the world stage may lead. Battery’s creative restraint eschews celebrity, testimonial, or literal narrative in favor of visual and linguistic cues that dramatize the scale and possibility intrinsic to global sporting excellence, embedding the brand within the inspirational context of high achievement and international connection. This move directly challenges the category’s norms around rational, product-led messaging, especially within a banking landscape where TD leans into convenience, Scotiabank pursues multicultural global growth, and CIBC focuses on digital ease; RBC’s ambition here is to shepherd clients not just into new markets but into new realities—ones that match the emotional and practical scale of the Olympic ideal. The financial services industry often grapples with intangible value, and by tethering international money transfers to something as visceral and universally understood as the Olympics, Pierce elevates the brand narrative, sidestepping commodity traps and igniting an emotive response linked as much to personal journey as to financial transaction. The campaign earns 55/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. In a crowded environment defined by parity products and incremental innovation, this campaign matters because it signals a renewed appetite for emotive, high-concept storytelling in banking, especially where international services have traditionally defaulted to functionality over inspiration.

Christmas is on the line! - Piraeus Bank | Clapboard Ad Archive — archive collection thumbnail

Christmas is on the line! - Piraeus Bank | Clapboard Ad Archive

Christmas is on the line! launches Piraeus Bank’s 2025 holiday campaign with a creative pivot combining the drama of festive rescue with the spectacle of EuroLeague basketball, positioning the bank at the heart of both Greece’s seasonal rituals and its deeply rooted sports culture. Developed by The Newtons Laboratory, the campaign throws Santa Claus into an unexpected narrative crisis—his sidelining by a basketball injury—prompting a high-stakes intervention where top EuroLeague talent from Olympiacos BC and Panathinaikos BC assemble to save Christmas, casting Sasha Vezenkov, Evan Fournier, Ntinos Mitoglou, and TJ Shorts as a star-powered substitute Santa squad. Underpinning this lively premise is a smart brand association for Piraeus Visa Cards, which are cast as the ticket to exclusive experiences like the EuroLeague Final Four in Athens, folding Piraeus Bank seamlessly into the festive escapism. By staging elite athletes from rival teams as temporary allies, the campaign orchestrates a moment of national unity and cross-club pride, harnessing the emotional currency of Greek basketball to enhance product desirability in a crowded end-of-year financial services market. The entry’s storytelling rests squarely within what Clapboard’s taxonomy would classify as FORMAT#8—Ongoing Characters or Celebrities, relying on the familiar faces and charisma of real players as engines for brand recall, trusted endorsement, and narrative momentum rather than traditional plot-driven product integration. The creative strategy not only elevates the genre of holiday banking communications—often mired in generic festive motifs—but signals a shift towards leveraging live sports celebrity, seasonal tradition, and culturally embedded storytelling to forge stronger connections with both passionate fans and everyday consumers. The result is a campaign that unites community, competition, and Christmas, carving out distinctive relevance for Piraeus Bank against competitors in the Banking / Finance category, where traditionalist institutions like National Bank of Greece, digital innovators such as Alpha Bank, and international players including HSBC Greece each push for mindshare in their own right. The campaign earns 63/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. Piraeus Bank’s Santa injury narrative matters to the industry because it signals the growing appetite for brand activations that cut through seasonal clutter by fusing hyperlocal sports relevance with festive storytelling, amplifying emotional connection and recall.

The Futurists - Wealthsimple | Clapboard Ad Archive — archive collection thumbnail

The Futurists - Wealthsimple | Clapboard Ad Archive

Wealthsimple’s national campaign The Futurists, created for the 2026 Canadian market and positioned decisively within the banking and finance category, redefines the role of financial storytelling with a documentary-inspired approach that veers sharply away from the industry’s polished archetypes and performance-driven narratives. Leveraging the agency’s discipline and capturing a distinctly contemporary mood, the campaign employs a candid, observational lens reminiscent of How To With John Wilson, featuring his unmistakable voice to introduce a hero film asset that interweaves the personal visions, anxieties, optimism, and contradictions of real Canadians as they imagine the years ahead. Grounded in original research on modern investors, The Futurists addresses the range of behaviours and emotions that define current attitudes toward investing — security, uncertainty, hope, and the ambiguity of progress — offering a narrative landscape populated by everyday people rather than idealized role models. Instead of promising that a single product will resolve consumer tensions, the campaign positions Wealthsimple as an empathetic, accessible financial partner that recognizes the complexities and realities Canadians face as they navigate an evolving social and economic environment, inviting viewers to see investing as a fundamentally human belief in the future, whatever form that may take. With scenarios ranging from visions of technology-driven utopias and AI-infused anxieties to undeniably Canadian pragmatism (bunkers and tinned beans included), the work carves out a uniquely relatable and pluralistic account of what progress looks like in 2026. By taking an approach that Clapboard’s 12-format taxonomy would classify as FORMAT#10—Associated User Imagery, the campaign replaces overt demonstrations of product efficacy with authentic user profiles, creating an emotional bridge between the brand and its audience through aspiration, recognition, and solidarity. The film’s resonance with over 2.6 million viewers provides credible evidence of its reach, demonstrating an appetite for more reflective, human-centered messaging in a sector crowded with transactional promises and legacy assurances. Clapboard rates this 66/100. This campaign matters because it signals a confident step toward advertising that mirrors the emotional and existential ambiguities of real investors, rather than retreating into the abstractions or certainties that have defined the finance category for decades.

Between Two Chargers - Income Insurance | Clapboard Ad Archive — archive collection thumbnail

Between Two Chargers - Income Insurance | Clapboard Ad Archive

Income Insurance charges into 2025’s rapidly electrifying mobility landscape with Between Two Chargers, a film-led campaign from BBH Singapore that squares off against the inertia of conventional car insurance with a purpose-built product for EV drivers: eDrivo Car Insurance. At the heart of the creative is a simple insight uniquely matched to Singapore’s surge in EV ownership — there is a meaningful protection gap for electric vehicles when they’re covered by legacy, combustion-centric motor policies. Rather than deliver a sober comparison, Income Insurance deploys two of the nation’s best-known comedians, Eugene Soh and Fadzri Rashid, to stage a cheeky head-to-head in a windswept charging field, with the eDrivo-insured driver skewering his friend’s regular policy on everything from battery-related liabilities to mobile rescue gaps. By framing the conversation as a comedic showdown — who really has the better deal? — the campaign both educates and entertains, foregrounding eDrivo’s specific coverage for issues like on-road battery depletion, unlimited battery replacement after accidents, and cyber hacking, all critical pain points for EV owners overlooked by traditional insurers. The work is anchored in what Clapboard’s taxonomy classifies as FORMAT#4—Contrast with the Competition: it dramatizes the shortfall of one product, unambiguously positioning the other as category-best. The message rapidly outgrows its paid media roots with plans for a live, drive-in stand-up show and a responsive social Q&A, leveraging the comedic talent’s influence to deepen audience participation and crystallize eDrivo’s distinctive proposition for Singapore’s tech-forward drivers. While some insurance incumbents have folded EV features into broader motor lines, Income Insurance and BBH Singapore set a new creative bar by weaving product USPs into cultural moments, keeping the tone fresh and audience-first across YouTube, Starhub TV, and cinema screens as well as on digital social touchpoints. The campaign earns a score of 67/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. Between Two Chargers demonstrates that a sharp, well-calibrated contrast — executed in the vernacular of local humor — can catalyze real perceptual change in risk-averse categories when brand and agency shift the conversation from defensive tactics to bold cultural engagement.

Campaign Proposition

The 2025-26 State Farm Football Campaign underscores the distinction between simply having insurance and having the dependable protection that State Farm offers. Central to the brand proposition is the message that when it truly matters—whether on the football field or in life—generic insurance isn’t enough; consumers need the "real deal" available only from State Farm. By leveraging pro athletes like Patrick Mahomes and Derrick “King” Henry alongside culturally familiar figures such as King Henry VIII and symbolic roles like a crossing guard, the campaign visually and narratively contrasts superficial protection with authentic strength and reliability. The market strategy hinges on a culturally resonant insight that consumers instinctively seek trustworthy, proven guardianship in moments of risk and uncertainty. By aligning State Farm with elite football players known for their strength and reliability, the campaign taps into the fervent emotional connection and loyalty football fans hold for their teams and heroes. This creative approach targets sports enthusiasts within the financial services market, reinforcing the idea that insurance isn’t one-size-fits-all. The use of humor and familiar sports personalities delivers the message in an engaging, memorable manner, setting State Farm apart in a traditionally utilitarian insurance category. Running these new commercials alongside previous football-themed ads sustains brand presence throughout the season, maintaining relevance during a peak moment for the target demographic. Overall, the campaign aims to deepen consumer perception of State Farm as a robust, trustworthy provider, not just another insurance option.

Creative Device

FORMAT#3 SYMBOLIZE THE PROBLEM — Uses symbols or analogies to represent the problem instead of showing it literally. This State Farm campaign most fittingly uses "Symbolize the Problem." Both spots—“Guard” and “King Henry”—center on humorous analogies: a crossing guard protecting a quarterback, and comparing star athlete Derrick Henry to King Henry VIII. These metaphoric setups illustrate, rather than directly state, that not all insurance offers real protection; only State Farm does. The narrative doesn’t literally depict insurance shortcomings, but instead uses exaggerated, symbolic situations and well-known figures to represent the inadequacy of “just any insurance” versus the real strength and expertise of State Farm, making FORMAT#3 the best creative match. ADVERTISING FORMATS EXPLAINED: https://www.clapboard.com/blog/branding-and-advertising/brand-strategy/12-advertising-creative-formats

Competitive Planks

Geico – Market Positioning Geico differentiates itself through its focus on affordability and convenience, leveraging memorable advertising and a user-friendly digital platform. It positions itself as a quick and easy option for insurance shoppers seeking good coverage at lower prices, emphasizing savings with its “15 minutes could save you 15%” campaign and strong online/mobile engagement.

Progressive – Market Positioning Progressive is known for its innovative use of technology and data with tools like the Name Your Price® tool and Snapshot® usage-based insurance. It targets customers who want customizable coverage and real-time discounts, positioning itself as a tech-forward insurer blending affordability and flexibility.

Allstate – Market Positioning Allstate positions itself as the provider of comprehensive protection with a personalized touch, promoting its “You’re in good hands” slogan. It emphasizes agent relationships, tailored policies, and value-added services like accident forgiveness, appealing to customers seeking reliability and customer support.

Nationwide – Market Positioning Nationwide markets itself as a trusted, all-encompassing insurance provider with a holistic approach to financial security. It leverages its broad product portfolio and community-focused initiatives, portraying itself as a stable partner both financially and socially responsible.

Farmers Insurance – Market Positioning Farmers Insurance focuses on personalized service and local agent expertise, positioning itself as an approachable and knowledgeable insurer. It highlights customizable insurance options and tools that empower customers while reinforcing strong community engagement and support.