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Changed App "Hack Your Loans" Campaign
In the summer of 2019, I spent 10 caffeine-fueled weeks working on a summer-long internship project to cap off my 3 months of agency work at Energy BBDO.
Us interns teamed up with the startup incubator 1871 to create a digital-first campaign for Changed, the as-seen-on Shark Tank student loan repayment app.
The app is simple: it works by rounding up spare change from your every day purchases to pay off your student loan debt an average of 6 years sooner, saving users thousands of dollars in interest.
If that sounds like a life hack to you, it's because it is! Enter "Hack Your Loans," a campaign designed to break the mold of traditional financial app advertising and reach our target, 18-30 year old "savvy shortcutters," with the message that Changed makes life easier.
agency: Energy BBDO
role: art direction intern & assisted with strategy and graphic design
CW: Peter McCormick
Design: Tess Barnes
brand revamp:
most financial apps are green, so we wanted to add a nice pop of color. We also reconstructed the squirrel logo and removed the white stroke so that it can live on more backgrounds across digital.
old logo:
new logo:
hack your loans:
Our target, the "savvy shortcutters" are life hackers through and through. So we wanted to reach them by placing our messaging on sites and apps this group is already using every day to hack their lives. Thus the medium becomes part of the message in this campaign.
where we hack dating:
where we hack tv:
where we hack shopping:
where we hack streaming:
where we hack transportation:
other kinds of medium hacking:
google SEO:
Google is the ultimate life hack. We turn to it to solve all of our problems. We learned through research that when we're panicked, we Google differently. And what is more panic-inducing than a mountain of student loan debt and a litany of financial terms that we don't even fully understand?
Changed can capitalize off this insight and use Google SEO to lead panicked googlers right to life hack they need in that moment: Changed!
Flagged search factors include:
-iterations of the term "loans" or "student debt"
-time of day (9am-6am to catch panicked late night googling)
-swear words & misspellings
native advertising:
Our target sees so much advertising across so many platforms every day that they can sometimes tune it out entirely.
Changed can use a life hack of their own by sponsoring an article on NIFTY, a Buzzfeed site people turn to for life hacks and tips. This way, the target will gain brand exposure without even consciously realizing they are looking at an advertisement.
social media (paid & owned) :
instagram stories - tip Tuesday:
Facebook - friends & family feature promotion:
sponsored event - March "Hack It" Tournament
March is a month where college and money are the two things on everyone's minds thanks to March Madness. Changed has an opportunity to become a part of this conversation by sponsoring a second chance bracket. People can register through the app and set up a Changed account for the opportunity to bring busted brackets back to life and potentially win money to go toward their student loan repayments.
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