‘The biggest challenge is overcoming people’s apathy’: Inside Simple’s marketing strategy
Simple is re-introducing itself through an ad campaign its been running on billboards and subway ads in various U.S. cities.
The ads pair everyday concepts most familiar and tangible to the seven-year-old neobank’s target millennial customer base, like binge watching and sweatpants, to convey how enjoyable and sensible its own offering — banking and budgeting, the latter of which major banking institutions are only now building into their experiences — can and should be. The company also wants to show it’s not “just an anonymous organization that doesn’t have a point of view,” said Valarie Hamm Carlson, Simple’s vp of brand. It’s a group of people that share the view of everyday consumers that banking shouldn’t be complicated.
“Every once in a while we need to jump back out there and say, ‘here’s who we are and if you don’t know us we we want introduce ourselves’ so people get a sense of our personality,” Carlson said. “Ideally we want that to come from the product but it’s always good to have a little bit of air cover and we haven’t done a lot of that in the past.”
More in Marketing
Marketers shift growing shares of search spending to GEO
Generative AI is pushing brands to shift SEO budgets toward visibility in AI-generated answers over clicks.
Philadelphia Cream Cheese pulls dollars from search – people aren’t Googling ‘cream cheese’
Philadelphia Cream Cheese has stopped paying for search ads, at least to prospective shoppers on Google. Over the past year, the Kraft Heinz-owned CPG brand has phased out its traditional search ad spend, opting to put those dollars instead into retail media and broader channels, according to Maddy Zingle, vp of marketing for Philadelphia Cream […]
TikTok courts CMOs with first-ever Collective, as it targets bigger budgets
In its first CMO-focused event in the U.K. TikTok showcased how easy it is for brands to create content. The event is only part of the platform’s sharper 2026 commercial strategy: targeting larger, long-term ad budgets, courting independent agencies, and positioning itself as a serious competitor to Meta in 2026.