2025 Winner
GoldBest Integrated Campaign - Budget Over $250,000
TD
"Invest in the Big Game"
Starcom
"Invest in the Big Game"
Starcom
On Super Bowl Sunday, everyone is watching the ads. They turned that into a reason to open an investing account.
In a hyper-crowded category, TD Easy Trade had a problem. Unaided awareness was steadily declining quarter over quarter, even while consideration remained in the top three.
The Super Bowl gave them one shot to break through. Not during the game, but during the ads.
That’s when their audience (Millennials and Gen Z) is most locked in on brands. They don’t just watch the commercials; they rank them, share them, and flood social feeds with reactions. For one night, ads aren’t background noise, they’re the main event.
So instead of trying to win the moment, they flipped it. If they’re already emotionally invested in the brands on screen, why not turn that into a financial investment?
Everyone knows the Super Bowl is all about the ads, but what most people don’t know is that companies that advertise during the game tend to outperform the S&P 500 by over 1% in the days that follow. So while people were talking about the ads, TD Easy Trade wanted them to invest in them.
“Don’t just watch the big game ads. You can own a piece of the companies behind them.”
Nike. Pepsi. Apple. Not just advertisers, investment opportunities.
Instead of buying into hype, they invited fans to literally invest in it.
The agency reframed investing as something they were already doing emotionally and made it tangible.
This was “Invest in the Big Game” a simple, smart cultural idea that turned passive viewership into financial empowerment. No jargon. No pressure. Just a platform that made it easy to own a piece of the companies they love.
By aligning with one of the most ad-obsessed days of the year and giving it financial meaning, the agency didn’t just hijack culture. They monetized it.
They didn’t just show up on Super Bowl Sunday but embedded themselves into every media that surrounded it.
While brands battled for airtime during the game, they built a media plan around the real sport: the ad breaks, the second screens, the instant reac:ons. They mapped the full behavioral ecosystem of Super Bowl Sunday from anticipation to analysis, memes to debates and inserted the education of TD Easy Trade at every high-attention inflection point.
On TikTok, they claimed the coveted TopView placement on game day, meeting fans at the precise moment they opened the app, ready to talk ads. On YouTube, they owned the CPH masthead capturing 4.7 million incremental impressions as users searched for Super Bowl spots, rankings, and recaps.
They went deep into live-stream culture on Twitch, reaching over 300,000 realtime viewers as they watched, commented, and dissected the game together. On Google, they aligned with NFL custom content packages to surround official highlight and recap videos staking their claim on the post-game ritual of rewatching and reanalyzing key moments.
And they met fans in the physical world too, with digital takeovers at Union Station, Yonge-Dundas Square, and The Well intercepting foot traffic during the pre-game build-up and post-game buzz when energy spills into the streets.
Their creative was everywhere sports fans were. Whether they were streaming, scrolling, or commuting, each placement pointed to one action: InvestInTheBigGame.ca, a frictionless educational landing experience that made it easy to start investing right away. By tapping into the cultural reflexes that define how people experience the Super Bowl, they turned every moment into an invitation to invest.
They didn’t buy a Super Bowl ad. They turned the ads themselves into their campaign, which was a first for a Canadian financial brand.
While others chased airtime, the agency saw something bigger: the cultural obsession with Super Bowl commercials. It was the first time a brand in this category used second-screen ad culture as a real-time trigger for investing, inviting Canadians to buy into the brands they were already cheering for.
This campaign delivered in the endzone. TD Easy Trade™ saw a 500% spike in daily app downloads, while cost-per-install dropped 61% year over year to a record-low.
Brand impact followed with unaided awareness more than doubling, and organic search soaring up 270% proving that showing up meaningfully in culture can break through complexity barriers in a way only Easy Trade can.
In a hyper-crowded category, TD Easy Trade had a problem. Unaided awareness was steadily declining quarter over quarter, even while consideration remained in the top three.
The Super Bowl gave them one shot to break through. Not during the game, but during the ads.
That’s when their audience (Millennials and Gen Z) is most locked in on brands. They don’t just watch the commercials; they rank them, share them, and flood social feeds with reactions. For one night, ads aren’t background noise, they’re the main event.
So instead of trying to win the moment, they flipped it. If they’re already emotionally invested in the brands on screen, why not turn that into a financial investment?
Everyone knows the Super Bowl is all about the ads, but what most people don’t know is that companies that advertise during the game tend to outperform the S&P 500 by over 1% in the days that follow. So while people were talking about the ads, TD Easy Trade wanted them to invest in them.
“Don’t just watch the big game ads. You can own a piece of the companies behind them.”
Nike. Pepsi. Apple. Not just advertisers, investment opportunities.
Instead of buying into hype, they invited fans to literally invest in it.
The agency reframed investing as something they were already doing emotionally and made it tangible.
This was “Invest in the Big Game” a simple, smart cultural idea that turned passive viewership into financial empowerment. No jargon. No pressure. Just a platform that made it easy to own a piece of the companies they love.
By aligning with one of the most ad-obsessed days of the year and giving it financial meaning, the agency didn’t just hijack culture. They monetized it.
They didn’t just show up on Super Bowl Sunday but embedded themselves into every media that surrounded it.
While brands battled for airtime during the game, they built a media plan around the real sport: the ad breaks, the second screens, the instant reac:ons. They mapped the full behavioral ecosystem of Super Bowl Sunday from anticipation to analysis, memes to debates and inserted the education of TD Easy Trade at every high-attention inflection point.
On TikTok, they claimed the coveted TopView placement on game day, meeting fans at the precise moment they opened the app, ready to talk ads. On YouTube, they owned the CPH masthead capturing 4.7 million incremental impressions as users searched for Super Bowl spots, rankings, and recaps.
They went deep into live-stream culture on Twitch, reaching over 300,000 realtime viewers as they watched, commented, and dissected the game together. On Google, they aligned with NFL custom content packages to surround official highlight and recap videos staking their claim on the post-game ritual of rewatching and reanalyzing key moments.
And they met fans in the physical world too, with digital takeovers at Union Station, Yonge-Dundas Square, and The Well intercepting foot traffic during the pre-game build-up and post-game buzz when energy spills into the streets.
Their creative was everywhere sports fans were. Whether they were streaming, scrolling, or commuting, each placement pointed to one action: InvestInTheBigGame.ca, a frictionless educational landing experience that made it easy to start investing right away. By tapping into the cultural reflexes that define how people experience the Super Bowl, they turned every moment into an invitation to invest.
They didn’t buy a Super Bowl ad. They turned the ads themselves into their campaign, which was a first for a Canadian financial brand.
While others chased airtime, the agency saw something bigger: the cultural obsession with Super Bowl commercials. It was the first time a brand in this category used second-screen ad culture as a real-time trigger for investing, inviting Canadians to buy into the brands they were already cheering for.
This campaign delivered in the endzone. TD Easy Trade™ saw a 500% spike in daily app downloads, while cost-per-install dropped 61% year over year to a record-low.
Brand impact followed with unaided awareness more than doubling, and organic search soaring up 270% proving that showing up meaningfully in culture can break through complexity barriers in a way only Easy Trade can.
Credits
CLIENTMaja Neable – Senior Vice President, and Chief Marketing Officer Canada
Michael Letsche – VP Wealth Marketing
Michael Armstrong – VP Brand Marketing
Ryan Kalsi – AVP TD Direct Investing Marketing
Sarah Green – AVP Brand Marketing
Brad Buset – Sr Manager, Brand Marketing
Mary Jane Ardron – Marketing Manager, TD Direct Investing Marketing
Bhavin Lad – Sr Manager, TD Direct Investing Marketing
Natasha Ferrari - Sr Manager, Corporate & Public Affairs
MEDIA AGENCY
Megan Lubberts – Vice President, Media Planning
Nicolle Williams – Group Account Director, Media Planning
Christian Pereira – Account Director, Media Planning
Raghav Budhraja- Senior Planner, Media Planning
Vivian Nguyen - Associate Director, Programmatic
Ashish Sehgal - Senior Account Manager, Programmatic
Bhuwan Sharma - Media Performance Associate Manager • Programmatic
Tanuj Joshi - Director, Social & Programmatic
Jose Miguel San Juan Reyes - Account Manager, Social
Social Specialist - Cathy Lam
Eddy Gunawan - Specialist, Advertising Operations
Mo Ali - Specialist, Advertising Operations
CREATIVE AGENCY
Ben Tarr – President
Tahir Ahmad – Chief Strategy Office
Angus Tucker – Chief Creative Officer
Steve Persico – Chief Creative Officer
Rachel Poad – EVP, Portfolio Lead
Rebecca Hickman – VP, Account Director
Krzysztof Iwanicki – Account Director
Robert Bernasch – Account Supervisor
Noah Feferman – Creative Director
London Choi – Senior Copywriter
Danielle Zablocki – Senior Art Director
Robin Soukvilay – Senior Art Director
Evan Wallis – Senior Copywriter
Ryan Roberts - SVP, Group Strategy Director
Zaid Khan – Strategy Director
Kaitlyn Balmer – Senior Producer
Kevin Stephen - Manager, Studio and Print Production
Thomas Degez – Project Director
Carly Price – Producer
Graham Bowman – Production Artist
Carrie Ma - Digital Designer
James Kim – Digital Designer
Dan Purdy - Motion Animator