Wealthsimple's New Ad Uses Deft Storytelling to Weave Tales of Tomorrow

On Jan. 1, robo advisory Wealthsimple released its latest campaign, "Tomorrow," created in-house with production supervision from Hone. 

"Tomorrow Begins Today" is the ad that sets the stage. Directed by Jonathan Alric of The Blaze, a musical duo who took the Film Craft Grand Prix at Cannes Lions in 2017 (for their incredible music video "Territory"), the almost wordless ad unspools to the keys of Jacob Adler's "Tomorrow."

It'd be a shame to reduce this piece to a list of moments, because half of its impact is in taking the time to deduce what's happening. Turning points, painful and promising, appear without context or closure. We'll never know the sex of that baby, or whether that woman quit her job. 

It's been said that money is worth only what we transform it into. Casually asked, we might imagine goods—a college education, a house, a yacht, an island. An endless litany of business books and self-help courses encourage us to be as specific as possible about what we want; how can the Law of Attraction work if we're vague? 

But "Tomorrow Begins Today" leaves us uncertain of its characters' fates, and only able to guess what motivates them. Those spaces are filled by our own projected hopes, expectations and feelings, and that's the point. 

Sometimes our efforts pave the way for things we don't dare say aloud or picture too clearly. We want to be open enough to welcome the future without jinxing it, and hopefully our hopes aren't forsaken in the process.

Unquantified desires can be the most potent ones we have, the unique solution for X that machine learning can't find. This leads us to the last unexpressed message in the work: that Wealthsimple, a robo advisory, is more than an algorithm. The real whisper between these lines is, "There are people back here."

CREDITS

Agency: Wealthsimple In-House
Executive Creative Director: Mike Giepert
Chief Product & Marketing Officer: Rudy Adler
Art Director: Jacob Weinstein
Copywriter: Thalia Forbes

Production Supervision: Hone
Broadcast Producer: Greg Tharp, Hone Production

Director of Production: Sharman Ordoyne

Production Company: Iconoclast
Director: Jonathan Alric
Director of Photography: Hoyte van Hoytema
Line Producer: Magali Selosse

Editor: Biff Butler, Rock Paper Scissors
Post producer: Lisa Barnable
Colorist: Tom Poole, Company 3
Music: Heaven by The Blaze; Tomorrow Anthem by Jacob Adler
Sound Designer: Phil Loeb, Heard City
Conform: Edward Reina, Rock Paper Scissors