2021: QuickBooks x Compton Girls Club

During the pandemic, over 90% of businesses had to pivot operations. Within this group, BIPOC and female founded organizations were disproportionately impacted. When we learned about Compton Girls Club (CGC), founded by Chrystani Heinrich, a librarian at Compton High School in South LA, we immediately wanted to partner with them.

We created the QuickBooks x Compton Girls Club: Business G.IRL Incubator, a virtual entrepreneurial workshop that gave young women the education and skills they needed to start, and sustain, their own small businesses. The 6-module course guided 11 young women through creating a business plan and teaching them about the power of branding and marketing. To complete the course, each participant pitched their business Shark Tank-style in front of a panel of judges. Upon graduation, each participant received a stipend of $500 to launch their business, along with headshots and printed business cards with their new branding.Through amplification of Chrystani’s story on CNN’s social and digital platforms, we delivered more than 1.3MM impressions against storytelling assets and 100% positive sentiment.  CGC received $60k in donations, the club was featured in the LA Times, and most importantly, 11 new small businesses came to life.

2020: Journey to Success

Our Year 3 campaign “Journey to Success,” showed the ups and downs that business owners experience on their path to success. The campaign brings to life the steps small businesses take to be successful, and the role QuickBooks and its connected suite of business tools and solutions can have in empowering their prosperity. The two spots dive into the diverse stories of two small businesses and their journeys to success with the help of QuickBooks.

2018: Credit Where Credit’s Due

It’s a story we’ve all seen before. The movie finishes, and everybody leaves the theater as soon as the credits roll…never taking notice of all the people that helped make the movie happen. QuickBooks’ mission is to champion the self-employed, and 85% of people who work in the movie industry work for themselves. So when the movie award season approached and the spotlight was on the big names in Hollywood, we decided to give credit to the unsung heroes of film.

How? By taking the credits from the end of a movie and playing them at the beginning. In 60 seconds, we highlighted the behind the scenes crew of ‘A Star is Born’, and put them immediately before the film itself in movie theaters across the country. Backed with posters, an online film, a social media campaign and a day of free profile headshots for the wider industry community, our film gave credits where credit is due.

2018: Danny Teaches

QuickBooks champions small business owners and the self-employed. For year 2 of our ‘Backing You’ campaign, we reminded those who work for themselves that it’s time to get what they’re owed for all the hard work they put in- namely, more time and more money.

We did it with a coach like no other- Danny DeVito. In a series of films, Danny cheers on real small business owners, including an electrician, a personal trainer and a dog groomer/daycare owner.  In addition, a series of instructional mini web films called ‘Danny Teaches’ allow Danny to demonstrate the utter simplicity of QuickBooks’ product suite (so simple, they only take 15 seconds to teach). The campaign was also backed by the gif that keeps on giving- dozens of Danny gifs, which quickly racked up 743 million downloads. Because…he’s Danny.

2017: Backing You

People who work for themselves know that it's the toughest gig in the world, but one they wouldn't change for a second. Whether they're a hairdresser, a long haul trucker, a Lyft driver hustling multiple jobs in the gig economy or an Etsy seller.  As a whole, these hard working folk make up the world's largest workforce. QuickBooks is proud to work for them.  

And I'm proud that we've got to highlight and celebrate some of these amazing people in our first campaign for Intuit, after winning the QuickBooks business earlier this year.

AdWeek Ad of the Day.

2017: Backing the Small Businesses Behind the Music

QuickBooks’ mission is to support and champion small businesses in every industry with our platform ‘Backing You'. So instead of just finding a singer to cover Daft Punk's 'Harder Better Faster Stronger', we found 13 yr old unknown Willa Amai, and launched her career. The music industry's largest workforce works for themselves, so as the GRAMMY spotlight shined on the big names, we shined a light on Willa and the team of independent workers bringing her career to life. We created a music video highlighting Willa and her team and launched it across social channels and YouTube. A full length version of the track was released on iTunes the same day- with Willa become a highlighted artist at launch and a shazam chart topper. With over 12 mil views in a week, over 500k downloads of the song plus 313 million impressions and counting, we succeeded in backing Willa all the way to stardom.