The courtship of the young adult taxpayer, a creature historically uninterested in being courted, has found another suitor.
TurboTax, the Intuit-owned tax preparation software that has spent decades persuading Americans that filing their own returns is not, in fact, an act of masochism, has appointed AKQA to help it reach Generation Z. The assignment focuses on digital video and content — the channels where younger consumers spend their time, and where they are least likely to be thinking about Schedule C.
"The importance of getting to this audience in their channels and in keeping with the culture is that Gen Z are the taxpayers of the future," said Louisa McCauley, executive business director at AKQA, which has been part of the WPP empire since its acquisition in 2012.
(One might note that Gen Z are also the taxpayers of the present, though perhaps not yet the enthusiastic ones.)
According to data from COMvergence, TurboTax's global media spending totals $240 million, with the United States accounting for $230 million of that figure — a substantial sum for a product that people are required by law to need once a year whether they want to or not.
The assignment represents another chapter in the long-running effort by tax preparation brands to make the annual ritual of filing seem, if not enjoyable, at least tolerable. TurboTax has historically relied on advertising that emphasizes simplicity and empowerment, though whether a twenty-three-year-old watching content on their phone will find tax software empowering remains to be seen.
AKQA, for its part, has built its reputation on digital work for clients across categories. Whether it can make withholding tables feel native to the platform is the kind of challenge that keeps agency strategists employed.
The taxpayers of the future, meanwhile, are still becoming the taxpayers of the present, one W-2 at a time.
Original story published in adweek.com: "TurboTax Taps AKQA to Appeal Towards Gen Z With Digital Video and Content"