Hi all! Charley here again.

I recently finished the FTT Tux Time podcast episode on social media influencers + fintech with Adam Hadi of Current. It got me thinking and remembering historic examples of celebrities endorsements within financial services. And so, I thought it would be fun to go through a blast from the past of banking advertisements that I remembered, as well as what fintech companies are doing today!

History of Celebrity Sponsorships

As a millennial, the first banking advertisements I remember all seem to be from the 2000s era - and Capital One immediately came first to mind for me. Capital One was historically known as the go to bank for sub-prime credit cards, but over the 2000s invested a ton of marketing capital to position the brand as more mass market. The sponsorship approach seemed to be tied to locking in exclusive, long term celebrity spokespeople and asking what’s in your wallet - Jennifer Garner or Alec Baldwin for the venture card, Samuel L Jackson for the quicksilver card, or even Taylor Swift for its banking products!

Other examples of financial institutions forming long term sponsorships + relationships with celebrities include many insurance companies such as All State (Dennis Haysbert going strong since 2003) and State Farm with Aaron Rodgers (and Drake now too!). Auto + Home insurance seems to be an extremely competitive space with a somewhat commoditized product, so it’s not surprising that insurance companies have invested heavily into brand building. Companies like Geico and Progressive have even created their own pseudo celebrities (first ever Geico Gecko commercial from 1999 and Flo from Progressive since 2008). In fact in 2018, Geico was the second largest TV advertiser after Proctor and Gamble and continues to be a major spender.

Meanwhile, American Express seems to sponsor shorter engagements with a wider cut of celebrities, including advertisements featuring Tina Fey & Martin Scorsese, Beyonce, and Taraji Hensen to name a few. Chase also seems to follow a bit of a similar approach, with recent partnerships announced with Kevin Hart, Serena Williams, and a few other celebrity endorsements.

Enter: Fintech Companies

Entering the new decade in 2010, fintech companies started to flex their funding and build more unique sponsorship relationships. Expensify’s 2019 super bowl commercial featuring an entire music video that they produced with 2 Chainz was quite a flex. The overlap between hip hop + music culture and fintech continues to grow - CashApp has been able to generate crazy growth with their sponsored cash drops with artists like Travis Scott, Miley Cyrus, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, Lil B, and many more (the interview that Lil B did with Complex was also quite interesting). Chime even gets involved, with a sponsored partnership featuring 21Savage talking about financial literacy!

Enter: Creators

At the same time, we’re starting to see a shift of brand legitimacy and sponsorship power move from name brand celebrities to creators that have active fan bases. Everyone obviously remembers famous YouTuber Justin Bieber’s partnership with BillMyParents in 2012 (spoiler alert, actually no one does but I thought this was a funny anecdote of how nothing is really new…) But just recently, Current announced a deep partnership with Mr. Beast (and quietly dropped David Dobrik after recent controversies). Mr. Beast has also announced a partnership with Juice, co-launching a creator investor fund with the company too. Step selected tiktok’er Charli Damelio to be their primary spokeswoman (as well as an investor into the company).

Expect to see many more creators announcing exclusive partnerships with fintech companies, especially since digital financial services continues to remain an extremely lucrative way to monetize audience bases.