Aubrey Plaza, Mark Duplass Star in Financial Campaign Targeting Millennials

To court the millennial market, Canadian automated-investment startup Wealthsimple has rounded up a few younger celebrities in a new series of spots debuting during the Golden Globes on Sunday. Two 30-second commercials, one starring actress Aubrey Plaza and another with actor-director Mark Duplass, talking about their money experiences, will kick off the campaign, the second iteration of "Investing for Humans," which Wealthsimple began in October. Other new spots, featuring Alex Karpovsky of HBO's "Girls" and Brian Tyree Henry of "Atlanta," round out the series, which will include more than a dozen TV spots and around 30 pieces of digital content. In addition to celebrities, the spots, all directed by Oscar-winner Errol Morris, will also show some interviews with non-celebrity clients. "We wanted to show that there are a lot of people out there that feel confident about their financial futures and have started to make smart decisions while they're young," says Mike Giepert, executive creative director at Wealthsimple, a former Wieden & Kennedy creative director who joined the company three years ago. Like its earlier iteration, the new push of "Investing for Humans," is a wholly in-house-created effort. Rather than work with outside agencies, Wealthsimple, a four-year-old outfit that offers automated investment through software to its customers, has built out its internal creative team. While there are currently 10 staffers on the branding team, which is based in New York, the company is planning to hire more for the department this year as it attempts to further capture the millennial market. Roughly 80 percent of Wealthsimple clients are under the age of 45; the average customer age is 33. Rudy Adler, co-founder and chief product officer, said that investing money in a diversitifed way through the use of software and, when needed, through human advisors, is appealing to young consumers because the costs are much lower than those of big banks and other large financial institutions. Wealthsimple is already attracting its share of venture capital investment. The fintech company has received $78 million in funding to date and the company launched in the U.S. last year. Similarly, San Francisco-based competitor Wealthfront, which also provides automated investment advice through data-driven algorithms, is currently raising another $75 million in funding after already raising $130 million, Techcrunch reported on Thursday. The hardest challenge for such companies might be differentiating their names.

Aubrey Plaza, Mark Duplass Star in Financial Campaign Targeting Millennials

Featured Stories