A year after what
mental health app Finch describes as “tactical” use of out-of-home
in New York’s Times Square to promote everyday self-care, the five-year-old brand has launched its first large-scale campaign: “Whatever It Takes to Get Through the Day,”
centering around an animated film and jingle describing “our little ways of coping so we don’t go insane.”
The methods, as
sung in the ad, include “We rage-clean the floor. We binge the same TV show we’ve seen 12 times before….We light stuff on fire. We take a quick break to go sit on the
dryer…”
The film — which has also been cut down into :30 and :60 versions — is perhaps in keeping with the quirkiness of Finch itself. The app, after all, is known for its
virtual pet bird that goes on its own adventures as users complete goals and daily tasks.
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“If we want to normalize self-care, we have to stop making it look so perfect,” Nino Aquinas,
Finch’s CEO & co-founder, saysof the new campaign.
“Most wellness advertising shows self-care as something polished and aspirational: perfect routines, perfect
lighting, perfect people,” he tells Marketing Daily. “But real self-care is usually much smaller and stranger than that. It’s bargaining with yourself to answer one
email… It’s taking care of a tiny cartoon bird because taking care of yourself feels harder that day.”
Finch had been growing mostly through word-of-mouth and performance
marketing, Aquinas says, but now needs a national campaign to “support its bigger mission of normalizing self-care…The timing felt right to tell a larger brand story that reflects real
life and helps people feel seen before they ever download the app.”
To create the campaign, Finch turned to brand-new Weirwork, a “microagency” founded by former Droga5 ECD
Kevin Weir who, in his Monday LinkedIn post, admitted that he “buries his face” in his own cat every day. The aptly named Prettybird’s Kirsten Lepore directed the film, with the
Mathematic studio handlinganimation.
“Our users tell us about the weird, specific things they do just to get through the day, and none of it looks like a typical wellness ad,”
Finch’s Vice President of Marketing Katie Shill explained in a statement. “We wanted our first campaign to reflect that reality… Bringing in Kevin and Kirsten and stepping outside
the traditional agency model gave us the freedom to make something stranger, more human, and ultimately more honest.”
The film — and ads linking to it — are running on connected
TV platforms like Roku, paid social like Meta and TikTok, and Finch’s TikTok and Instagram channels, with Headlight handling media buying.
The target audience, per Aquinas, is
“primarily Gen Z and millennials looking for a gentler, more emotionally supportive approach to self-care, especially people navigating motivation, anxiety, burnout, ADHD, depression, or
maintaining routines. “
Aquinas says measurement of the campaign, which will run for at least 12 weeks, will focus on three core metrics: reach and reach efficiency
(“how many people did the campaign reach and was Finch able to reach them more efficiently than alternative channels?”); brand awareness and message recall (“among those reached, how
many remember seeing Finch and how many remember core messaging?”) and brand impact on business metrics like app downloads, retention, revenue, and performance marketing efficiency.
