Most financial marketing that’s aimed at small business owners has a cookie-cutter feel. The protagonists are depicted as being almost impossibly calm and in control, with every detail buttoned up in a way that rarely matches real life.

It’s a version of entrepreneurship that looks good on camera but doesn’t feel especially true to the people who are living it day to day, said Philip Lowe, head of creative at finance management software provider Quicken.

“That sort of creative comes off as sterile and it’s part of the sea of sameness you get with a lot of the more traditional spots,” Lowe said.

So for Quicken’s latest campaign to promote its all-in-one app for managing business and personal finances, which launched in February, the team decided to get a little playful.

Kidding Around

Working with its agency Camp + King, Quicken cast kids as stand-ins for stressed-out small business founders trying to keep their pint-sized operations from spinning out of control.

In one ad, a towheaded little boy in a suit runs his “cookie empire,” answering the phone with “Bake it till you make it,” doling out advice like, “Pair that with milk, you’re gonna love it” and stressing over the margins on chocolate chips.

In another, the kid owner of “Kidz Car Rental” wearing khakis, a blue button down and holding a clip board laments that his business money keeps getting mixed up with his allowance money. At one point, he hollers to his employee, a little boy wearing coveralls, “Hey, Sal. Is this money for snacks or operations?!”

But the kids aren’t just there for cuteness, Lowe said. Casting children gave Quicken permission to be funny about money and lean into humor in a category that usually defaults to fear or a glossy fiction where everything is in perfect order.

“When adults fail in an ad, it can feel shame-based,” he said. “But with kids, there’s a charm to the chaos. It becomes more human and relatable and avoids being judgmental in any way.”

Behind the Scenes

Although the idea behind the campaign seems simple on the surface — casting kids in the role of overworked founders – Lowe said it was a “very rigorous” process to develop the creative.

Quicken and its agency started with between 10 and 15 concepts and used AI to generate storyboards and lightweight animated mockups to test what was likely to resonate.

They ran those through a mix of creative pretesting tools, including one from iSpot, to gauge potential effectiveness before deciding what to put into production. They also layered in facial-recognition-based attention data to determine at which points viewers were leaning in or possibly starting to lose interest.

Lowe is even considering bringing on a creative technologist as a consultant to stay on top of new tools and separate the ones that actually help from those that just add friction.

“We always do a lot of testing up-front before we release a spot,” he said.

Quicken also used outtakes and bloopers from the video shoot as extra fuel for social media, including an Instagram reel of the kid actors from the car rental video flubbing their lines adorably and vibing on set.

“These unexpected moments of delight really help tell and sell the story,” Lowe said.

Meanwhile, although the work was conceived as classic brand creative, it’s generating more than just upper-funnel awareness. People are clicking through from the video on Meta, and on YouTube the responses look different from the usual pattern.

“With a finance company, you typically don’t get much engagement, and when you do, it’s people complaining,” Lowe said. “But here, people are engaging and commenting in a positive way, because they’re connecting with these kids.”

For Lowe, though, the point of the work isn’t just that it’s watchable and shareable; it’s that it gives Quicken the opportunity to talk about small business finances without defaulting to scare tactics or cliches.

“To me, humor is the biggest lever in terms of relating to other human beings,” he said. “There’s so much noise out there, and everything is sort of doom and gloom, especially if you’re paying attention to what’s happening in politics and the news. We all need to laugh a little bit more.”