Wealthsimple Turns Banking’s Outdated Rituals Into Comical Collapse

Wealthsimple, Martin De Thurah, and Epoch Films have returned for their latest campaign, ‘It’s Over,’ taking a critical and comedic look at the antiquated practices the banking industry still clings to.

Through an absurdist point of view, the film shows a world literally crumbling around customers as they write checks and enter their PINs. Even when it no longer makes sense and the stale infrastructure holding it together fractures and falls apart, everyone - the clients, the bank employees - keeps doing the same thing. Metaphorical in nature, the customers are never in perilous danger. Rather, ‘It’s Over’ shows how people are so entrenched in their old habits that they can’t perceive any other way of doing things.

'It's Over' marks the fourth time Wealthsimple's in-house creative team has trusted De Thurah and Epoch to bring their campaign to life. For this project, Wealthsimple partnered with Martin and FLAIR, a new image making studio and directors collective, in both the pre- and post production phase of the film. The first by working with extensive pre-vis and testing, the latter by creating the actual collapse of the bank along side Blacksmith VFX. By iterating varying levels of collapse in advance of the shoot using AI, the team ensured the shoot and VFX worked as one seamless vision. This integrated creative approach resulted in a moment of profound recognition that grabs viewers with physical comedy and impactful visuals, showing that there is a better way to bank with Wealthsimple.

“This is a story about a failing system finally falling over,” remarked Epoch Films’ Martin de Thurah on directing this spot. “We’re drawn to things that are new and different, but are perhaps also a bit afraid of them. Working with Wealthsimple has been one of the highlights of my career, and bringing in the team at Flair and incorporating new tools into the process made this round even more creatively exciting. All in all, ‘It’s Over’ was a lovely creative journey, and I’m proud of the work we made.”

"There are a lot of things we put up with because we're just used to them. Even if they're broken and ancient and expensive and kind of bonkers. Banking is a lot like that,” said Devin Friedman, chief content officer, Wealthsimple. “That's what we wanted to show – our comical ability to carry on even as the system collapses under the weight of its own crappiness. Wealthsimple's products solve all sorts of problems – banks that charge you for keeping money in your own checking account, pathetic interest rates, rigidity, slowness – that define an industry that hasn't been challenged in a century. Wealthsimple is a better way."