Turning Cartesian Philosophy into Financial Common Sense for interactive investor

​The retail investment market is defined by a fundamental tension. On one side sit the well-established brands investors default to out of habit; on the other, a wave of newer entrants promising value but lacking long-earned trust. For consumers, the result is perceived trade-off between trust, cost, and choice - a “compromise triangle” that makes switching providers feel complex, uncertain, and rarely worth the effort.

Enter interactive investor (ii). Despite being the UK’s second-largest investment platform, its massive scale was something of a well-kept secret. As Dom Roe, chief strategy officer at creative agency RCP points out, ii’s growth had historically been driven by corporate acquisition rather than consumer-facing brand building. It had the sheer size, but lacked the meaningful, top-of-mind awareness to match. They were, essentially, a giant hiding in plain sight.

The brand’s previous marketing had done the heavy lifting of explaining what the company offered from a product perspective. But there was a crucial missing piece; interactive investor needed to explain why its service was the distinctly better option. It needed to pivot from a functional description of its services to a compelling challenger narrative that could resonate both with consumers and internal stakeholders. But how do you encourage an audience to explore a less familiar brand as a first investment choice? Or get them to overcome the inertia of switching from an existing provider? You demonstrate that your alternative is the obvious choice for a thoughtful investor, and give them just enough proof to start their reconsideration journey.

Escaping the Compromise Triangle

To get to that “obvious” conclusion, RCP didn’t just brainstorm in a vacuum. They embarked on an extensive research phase – a 7Cs analysis, quantitative consumer testing, and extensive stakeholder interviews that spanned from the C-suite down to the day-to-day staff.

For Gemma Buckwell, ii's head of brand, this internal alignment was non-negotiable. Too often, external agencies present brand strategies that look great on a slide but feel disconnected to the people actually working there. "From early on, my ambition was for it to not feel like, 'Yeah great, but that’s not us as a company,'" she explained. The strategy had to ring true within the four walls of the business before it could ever convince a consumer.

To ensure the new positioning didn't just gather dust as a strategy paper, the ii brand team undertook a massive internal communications effort. "When we came to rolling the strategy out, we spoke to every single colleague within the company," 

The goal was to transform the strategy into a lived positioning, and it worked. Today, the concept of being the "obvious choice" isn't just an advertising tagline; it is deeply embedded in ii's corporate DNA. "We are starting to see the language of our brand positioning coming across in many different parts of the business," Gemma adds. "It’s in our business strategy, the driving force about what we’re trying to achieve. The brand strategy and the business strategy are now very much aligned, which for me is a huge demonstration of the success of how well it's been received internally."

The breakthrough came from identifying what Dom Roe calls the sector ”compromise triangle”. Typically, consumers looking for an investment platform are forced to pick two out of three benefits: a stellar reputation, low pricing, or expansive choice. If you want a trusted reputation and endless market choice, you pay a premium percentage fee. If you want low fees, you often have to sacrifice choice or trust your money with an unproven startup.

But RCP’s research revealed that ii fundamentally broke this rule. Underpinned by a progressive, flat-fee pricing structure, ii offered the scale, the market choice, and the unbeatable value, all without forcing the customer to compromise.

When RCP put this reality in front of consumer focus groups, the reaction was palpable. As Dom recalls, people would literally look at the proposition and say, “I’m going to go check that actually... that seems really, really interesting.” The data proved that when investors actually stopped to compare the facts, the case for ii was undeniable. The brand didn’t need to invent a glossy new persona; it just needed a mechanism to make people stop and think.

Originally, RCP was brought in purely for this strategic heavy lifting – hired for their brains to define the positioning over a six-month period. But as the “obvious choice” narrative took shape, the relationship naturally evolved. As Harriet Giles, RCP senior account director, notes, the initial strategy phase established a “one-team mentality” built on openness and mutual trust. When it came time to actually build the launch campaign, that trust paid off. “Who better to bring the creative to life than the people who owned and came up with the strategy” explains Gemma. ii dipped its toe in the water with RCP’s creative testing, the team liked what they saw, and expanded the remit. RCP wasn’t just doing the thinking anymore; it was tasked with the execution itself.

Descartes in Adland

Armed with the knowledge that interactive investor was the objectively superior choice for investors who simply stopped to do the maths, RCP distilled the strategy into a razor-sharp creative brief: “When you think about it even for a second, the answer is obviously ii.” What the creative team came back with was a masterstroke of copywriting that married financial logic with 17th-century epistemology: ‘I think, therefore ii’.

It’s an audacious move to build a retail finance campaign around a gross paraphrasing of René Descartes’ Cogito, ergo sum, but the agency knew they had struck gold. As Dom explains, the brilliance of the line lies in its dual functionality. “For Descartes, the act of thinking showed that he existed. For us, the act of thinking shows that we’re better off,” he notes.

Crucially, the agency handled the philosophical concept delicately to avoid alienating the audience. It was never designed to be pretentious. In testing, they found that while 50% to 70% of people immediately recognised the Cartesian reference, the rest simply understood it as a straightforward statement of logic: If I think about it, obviously the answer is ii. “It wasn’t a prerequisite for understanding the campaign,” Dom adds. “It’s almost like a little Easter egg that allows people getting it to go, ‘Ah, it’s quite clever that as well.’” In an industry that often talks down to consumers, making your audience feel smart is a remarkably effective way to build brand affinity.

Visualising the Metaphor

With the concept locked, the next challenge was visual. How do you dramatise the internal, cognitive process of a consumer coming off autopilot and realising they are paying too much in percentage fees?

The answer was right there in the vernacular: the penny drop. It is a universally understood metaphor for sudden realisation, the perfect “forehead slap” eureka moment. Better yet, it intrinsically tied the creative back to the world of finance and overcharging. But as Harriet points out, landing the right tone was a delicate balancing act. Early conceptual iterations of a giant dropping penny were, as Dom describes laughs, “destructive” and “calamitous.” The team quickly realised that the power of the ad lay not in the physical impact of the coin, but in the human moment of revelation.

Translating that to the screen was an enormous production undertaking. Integrating a colossal CGI penny into live-action environments required a gruelling four-day, predominantly exterior shoot across various London locations. The production team had to contend with an army of extras, CGI considerations, unpredictable London storm clouds, and even pigeons. 

Yet, the rigorous shoot paid dividends. As Gemma highlights, the client-agency partnership ensured they squeezed every ounce of value from the production, generating not just the hero 30-second TV spots, but a wealth of bespoke social assets and pension-specific variations. The result was a visually arresting campaign that cut through the category conventions with wit, scale, and crystal-clear messaging.

RCP’s “Four Tions”

For the effectiveness heads reading, a clever philosophical pun and a giant CGI coin are only as good as the business results they drive. RCP operates on a proprietary effectiveness framework that they call the “Four Tions” of advertising: attention, emotion, cognition, and action. As Dom explains, omitting any one of these pillars cripples a campaign. “Starting with cognition: what’s the message we want to land? We’re not just doing emotion advertising that doesn’t land a cognitive output as well”, he notes. “But once we’ve got that message, make damn sure that we’ve got a campaign that’s going to be high in attention-grabbing nature, full of emotion that makes people feel something, and then ultimately isn’t just a vanity project for the agency but drives business results.”

The ‘I think, therefore ii’ platform fires on all four cylinders. It grabs attention with the surreal visual of a colossal penny crashing into a London street. It taps into the emotion of that universally relatable, forehead-slapping relief of a sudden realisation. It delivers crystal-clear cognition around the flat-fee pricing structure. And crucially, it is driving action.

While Gemma is careful to note that these are still early days for the Q4-launched campaign, the initial data is incredibly promising. interactive investor is already seeing incremental uplifts across core brand metrics, including awareness, consideration, and top-tier preference.

Furthermore, immediate behavioural metrics like web traffic and brand searches have hit record highs. The needle is moving from generic awareness to meaningful, considered preference.

A Foundation for the Future

Ultimately, the success of the campaign is a testament to an unusually healthy agency-client dynamic. Harriet attributes this to a relationship built on openness, honesty, and a shared ambition to make work that actually moves the dial.

But perhaps the most refreshing aspect of the partnership is how ii actively pushed the agency to go further. “The guys at interactive investor have been so good at pushing creative to get to better work”, Dom shares. “That desire to get to better work as a shared belief, rather than a point of conflict, is so powerful. Creative teams love working with clients that are trying to get you to get to better work collectively.”

By anchoring the brand in the undeniable truth of being the “obvious choice” RCP and ii haven’t just launched a campaign; they’ve built a resilient, future-proof platform. It’s a strategic high ground that becomes even more powerful as market conditions change. As competitors inevitably tweak their percentage-based models – often, as Gemma notes, repricing in “not such a positive way” for the consumer – it doesn't need to scramble for a new message. It simply has to point back to the maths, get the penny to drop, and remind the market exactly why it remains the obvious choice.