TurboTax’s ‘Undone’ campaign won Gold in Content and Finance at The Drum Awards for Marketing. This campaign aimed to educate young Canadian filers about tax filing, addressing the anxiety and avoidance Gen Z feels towards taxes. By creating a horror film that mirrored the stress and isolation of tax anxiety, TurboTax effectively communicated the importance of facing taxes head-on.
Each year, TurboTax sets out to educate Canadians about tax filing, offering solutions for any tax situation. This year, we zeroed in on young Canadian filers just stepping into the world of taxes. Our task? Convince a notoriously hard-to-convince generation to face their taxes head-on with the help of TurboTax.
When it comes to taxes, Gen Zs have plenty to be scared of. Their generation is coming of age through a rollercoaster economy, the subsequent rise of side hustles, and navigating major personal life changes—and the tax changes that come with them—all making the thought of doing taxes more daunting than ever for young people. For some, these stresses and fears can lead them to avoid preparing their tax return.
Unfortunately, they might be missing out on savings, tax breaks, and opportunities because of this confusion and fear, creating a self-perpetuating cycle where stress causes fear, fear causes avoidance, and avoidance causes more stress.
TurboTax has the solutions to ensure Gen Zs get their taxes done right. Whether they earn income from one source of employment or multiple side hustles, TurboTax can help them, with experts to assist them and discounts for filers under 25. Despite this, the brand faces a perception that its offering is only suitable for simple, straightforward returns. TurboTax needed to convince a notoriously hard-to-convince generation not to face their fears alone and to embrace simple solutions for seemingly complicated tax situations.
They say nothing is certain except death and taxes…
And while Gen Z has no fear of death—they’re more comfortable with the idea than Boomers—they’re having a hard time wrapping their heads around the tax part. TikTok creators casually drop “taxes terrify me” or “I don’t know what to do, I need an adult.” In fact, 85% of Canadian Gen Zers experience the overwhelming effects of anxiety and stress when they think about filing their taxes.
Gen Zers are twice as likely to be self-employed as folks over 35, making taxes less straightforward. They likely put them off as long as possible, don’t know that they may need to save money for anything owed, and aren’t always sure of what to do with the growing box of receipts over the year. Taxes have become a symbol of a system that hasn’t really worked out well for them, or perhaps they just don’t have the right support to start. And starting is the hardest part.
The horror genre provided a platform to feature many of the common traits and symptoms associated with experiences of stress and anxiety through cinematic language, like negative self-talk, isolation, and shortness of breath. It also effectively communicated the anticipation, stress, and overwhelming emotions tied to tax anxiety.
Undone, a 9-minute horror film, plunges viewers into an unassuming apartment where the dread of tax season takes on a haunting presence and brings tax anxiety to life. The film mirrors those real feelings of pressure, paranoia, and isolation, building to a breaking point—just like anxiety itself.
Producing a short film on a tight budget was a challenge. Most 30-second TV spots have budgets 4-5x larger than ours. But horror thrives on constraints, and we turned limitations into strengths. Instead of a large cast, we focused on one actress to heighten feelings of isolation. A single set became an eerie character, reflecting the protagonist’s unraveling mind, disconnecting from reality due to anxiety. Practical effects kept costs low while adding realism to the scares.
We partnered with a one-stop production house to produce the film at a lower cost, keeping production and post-production teams under one roof. Throughout the production, many members of the team wore multiple hats, like the writer acting as script supervisor and a member of the client team being additional voice talent.
By embracing the scrappy nature of the horror genre, we delivered a chilling, high-impact film with a budget unthinkable in traditional advertising.
Staying true to the genre, we cut a trailer and ran it as a pre-show ad in Cineplex theaters across Canada and on social media throughout April before taxes came due, and submitted the short in Gen Z’s favorite midnight film festivals to ensure it was screened (and screamed at) by our target audience. By leaning into effective, time-tested film-inspired tactics we were able to strategically invest our budget while reaching our audience through the content and mediums we know they consume.
Gen Z is one of the most active generations on social media, and although recent movie theater closures and box office sales say otherwise, in 2020, more than 60 per cent of Gen Z audiences reported watching a movie every week, and people from this demographic continue to be cinema’s most habitual moviegoers.
The film was released in full on YouTube with cutdowns on social media and OLV. To round out the campaign, we partnered with mental health advocate Brittany Krystantos and shared her tips on our channels and through media interviews to help get the word out and mitigate tax anxiety.
Undone is a rare example of a client and agency putting all the normal rules of communications aside to make something resonant and unforgettable in the way that Gen Z expects, and it delivers a message that they needed to hear.
Like any great horror film, young Canadians couldn’t look away and learned about TurboTax solutions in the process. Undone drove 1.7 million completed video views and over 26 million social and online video and traditional media impressions, showing Gen Z that filing doesn’t have to be so scary.
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