“We created an online bank where we give people free lottery tickets to win 10 million dollars as a reward for saving money.”
Yotta is a new type of bank, one that is online only. The fact that they don’t have physical locations means they don’t have to pay for all of that rent or salary for all of those tellers. They save a lot of money compared to traditional banks, and give that money back to their users in an interesting way: by holding a giant, free weekly lottery. The idea is simple: the more money you save in your savings account, the more tickets you get to the weekly drawing.
The challenge was: How do you convince people to ditch the traditional bank they’ve been with presumably for many years, and switch to a bank with rewards that seem too good to be true?
The solution: By using polished visuals to establish trustworthiness, and actually explaining the logistics behind how Yotta’s rewards are financially possible.
My responsibilities as Director & Creative Director:
Research: I sat down with the founder & CMO of Yotta. They shared the benefits of their product: no fees, a good apy, and rewards that are way more fun than anything you’d find at a traditional bank. Then, I heard the problems: viewers think Yotta is a scam, because the rewards seem too good to be true. Viewers had objections like: there must be a catch, there are probably outrageous hidden fees, how can a bank afford to host a 10 million dollar lottery every week?
Next, I talked to two dozen random customers. Nearly all of them praised Yotta’s rewards structure for helping them save more money. Many of them were people who genuinely loved buying lottery tickets and were thrilled that they could receive them for free. Once people got over the initial hesitation of trusting a new bank, customers reported smooth sailing.
Writing: The crux of this ad relied on our ability to be trustworthy. Yes, Yotta has a 10 million dollar weekly lottery, but it’s completely legit, FDIC insured, with no hidden fees. This ad utilized one of our favorite writing methods: the art of infotainment. We had to educate our audience to handle their objections, but do so in an interesting way. Since so many of their customers reported regularly buying lottery tickets, we doubled down on this and really played into the “win money for free” aspect.
Visuals: Since this ad needed to ease viewer’s fears about Yotta being a scam, I needed to make sure the ad looked genuine and authentic. I opted for a strict color palette, with stop motion, quirky hand-painted props, and dogs (!!!) to bring creativity to a typically boring niche. I wrote every visual in the script, curated every prop, designed every (fake) lottery ticket, and spent approximately 2 hours too long deciding between two different color palettes.
Director: I directed this two day shoot. We had over a hundred different props, 12 scheduled dogs, 7 crew members, and 43 scenes. It was truly a blast, and I’m really happy with how it turned out.
Post-production feedback: I gave detailed feedback to our editor to help ensure the cut reflected what was intended in the script. For this particular ad, we had quite a few stop motion scenes that needed fine tuning. Since the logistics behind Yotta are a bit complicated, we played around with the information in post to ensure what we were explaining made sense and didn’t cause any new questions.
