Tired of jumping through hoops? Tangerine Bank can help you plot your escape

Escape from drudgery is a common story in advertising—as seen in classic spots like Apple “1984” and VW “Bubble Boy,” or more recent work like last month’s primal scream of an ad from RVing Canada.

Here’s the latest entry in the genre—a 90-second spot from Rethink for Canada’s Tangerine Bank, featuring a well-known phrase made literal. Though it turns out our hero is so run down, he’s not even jumping through hoops; he’s gingerly clambering, even crawling, through them, with no end in sight.

The spot was directed by Nick Ball, who also made last year’s “The Troll” for Ikea Canada with Rethink. The details here are strong. The gloomy world feels lived in and real, thanks to scenes like the hoops floating in the park. (Alex Bickel, colorist on the spot, also graded Everything Everywhere All at Once.) The music, an original track that’s upbeat yet a bit maddeningly so, also adds a circularity to the vibe.

“We liked that physicalizing the hoops metaphor was dead simple,” Aaron Starkman, global chief creative officer at Rethink, told Ad Age. “Paired with the bureaucratic world we created, we took it to an extreme to land the point. We’ve all had to jump through hoops, but we shouldn’t have to with our bank.”

“Our goal with ‘Hoops’ is to reignite Tangerine as the no-nonsense choice for customers,” said Nicole German, CMO of Tangerine. Another key to the spot, German added, was casting “the most exhausted looking man in the world.”

Starkman, who was at the shoot, added: “We were working against light and weather in multiple scenes, but we were able to be incredibly efficient with time because our crew and talent were so strong. The locations were selected to lean into that dystopian feeling. Nick was also playing music on set at times, so we could feel the story coming together on set, which for something with heavy VFX was amazing.”

Rethink became Tangerine’s agency of record in 2022. This is its first major campaign for the digital bank.