Intuit TurboTax Names R/GA Its Lead Creative Agency

IPG creative agency R/GA has won Intuit TurboTax’s business, following a creative review that began in March.

Intuit brands include Intuit TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks and Mailchimp. R/GA will work on increasing consumer adoption of TurboTax offerings TurboTax Live and TurboTax Full Service. To do this, it will take a full-funnel approach to strategy, spanning TV, digital, audio, social media, sponsorships and other activations. The partners expect the work to launch in 2024.

R/GA’s win comes after it recently won work with Intuit QuickBooks Australia. IPG and its partner agency FCB New York are leading that relationship, and R/GA will focus on building QuickBooks’ brand positioning.

The business leaves Wieden+Kennedy, which defended its position during the review. Aside from confirming its involvement, the agency declined Adweek’s requests for comment on this story. Soukas declined to name the other agencies invited to pitch, but said he evaluated “a broad range of creative agencies.”

Wieden+Kennedy will continue managing Intuit’s media strategy, planning and buying, while also supporting the brand’s measurement and analytics functions.

MediaLink led the RFP process for TurboTax, and Soukas described a “long-standing relationship” with the advisory firm.

“Having been a strategic advisor to Intuit on their marketing transformation journey for the last few years, MediaLink was thrilled to have the opportunity to work with the wonderful team at TurboTax for this creative review,” Sosti Ropaitis, executive vice president at MediaLink, said in a statement provided to Adweek.

The remote pitch team came together from locations as varied as LA, San Francisco, Austin, Atlanta and New York. The R/GA team’s honest conversations, Washington said, were crucial to win. “Your tax return is an incredibly intimate document, and so when you’re talking about it, you have to have a space where you can bring some of that to the table,” Washington said. “I was really happy that we were able to create something where sometimes when we weren’t in the same room, it felt like we were in the same room.”

According to data provided by COMvergence, TurboTax spent $239 million on measured media in 2022, with $85 million of that being spent on digital media.

Talking taxes and money

The agency team set up a War Room to brainstorm ideas for the pitch.

Getting the messaging right was crucial. This is because tax season, Washington told Adweek, “Is the one time that most Americans really think about their financial past.”

To get inside consumers’ minds, the pitch team discussed their personal feelings about taxes and money. The conversation was especially helpful, according to Washington, because the pitch team included both new American citizens and employees that identified as second-generation immigrants.

It is just so important to try to create those spaces when you’re doing this. Sometimes it can be hard, especially, in a post-pandemic world,” Washington said. The team threaded thematic elements that arose during the War Room conversation into its creative pitch.

“R/GA showed real passion for our business, including a data and insights-based approach to creative,” Soukas said. “They will work hand-in-hand with our new partners at R/GA to ensure the creative strategy is brought to life in the right media channels throughout the year,” Soukas added.

During the pitch, R/GA also showcased its broad service offering. It’s common for brands to approach R/GA because it wields what Washington called “four amazingly sharp swords.” Those include: Product and experience; campaign expertise; media chops; and data mastery. Intuit structures its marketing organization similarly, in the sense that the team views everything as an end-to-end experience.

“It’s very rare that you have a brand experience that has a stated need at the same level for all four of those disciplines,” Washington said. It also helped that Intuit is a particularly data-driven brand, she added. The agency hopes it can use its technology and analytics chops to complement and augment Intuit’s data strategy.

R/GA’s tumultuous year

Winning Intuit’s business now is a bright spot for the beleaguered agency.

Recent market conditions and stymied new business opportunities took a toll on R/GA. The agency underwent several rounds of layoffs that began last June when it cut its workforce by 5%. Rounds of layoffs continued sporadically until this April, when the IPG agency laid off approximately 100 employees.

A series of leadership changes, including CEO Sean Lyons, who left the agency for Accenture Song, combined with public new business failures further impacted the agency’s financial health. In December 2022, R/GA’s new multimillion partnership with Mattress Firm buckled unexpectedly. The client promptly cut ties with R/GA, and a source told Adweek at the time that R/GA could not staff the Mattress Firm account fast enough.

When asked about R/GA’s recent structural changes and layoffs, Soukas told Adweek he feels confident the agency will meet his needs.

“From the beginning, we were impressed with the R/GA team’s insight-driven customer focus, strategic thinking and collaborative spirit,” he said.

Concerns about the layoffs and recent structural changes weren’t even raised during the pitch process, R/GA confirmed. Like R/GA, the Intuit team largely works remotely, and conversations about workflow largely centered on how the two partners will best collaborate given their dispersed workforces.