The 30-second spot, which will make its TV debut during Sunday’s game, highlights the company’s branding impetus that it is “opening America’s financial system to everyone.” The commercial shows how ordinary people live their lives and shows how to integrate the Robinhood app into their daily routine. The commercial ends with the slogan “we are all investors.”
The ad appears at a precarious time for Robinhood.
Last week, Robinhood outraged users and lawmakers by purchases from GameStop(GME), AMC(AMC) and other favorites from the WallStreetBets Reddit group who disrupted parts of the financial markets. Hours later, Robinhood raised $ 1 billion from existing investors in a move that signaled a cash crunch. Days later, the free trading app raised another $ 2.4 billion from investors – a huge amount that underscores the intense financial pressures the company is suddenly facing.
Robinhood’s decision to curtail certain transactions prompted users to file a class-action lawsuit alleging that the company’s actions unfairly manipulated the market against its own customers. And Senator Elizabeth Warren this week demanded replies from the company for “abruptly changing the rules” for individual investors by temporarily banning the purchase of certain stocks.
The company’s blog post on the Super Bowl ad does not mention the controversy. Robinhood said earlier that the ad was created in the “hope of reaching and empowering millions of people” who “felt left behind by the American financial system.”
“We do this for the early jogger, the afternoon study, the late-night nursery runner – because we all invest in ourselves every day,” the company said in the post.
The ad’s feel-good vibe, which costs Robinhood about $ 5.5 million to air during the game, follows a similar playbook used by other companies looking to regain the public’s good will and a mea culpa to offer. Wells Fargo(WFC), Uber(UBER) and Facebook(FB) in 2018 they all went that way after various controversies.
An effective apology ad targets the “ elephant in the room, ” Tony Calcao, executive creative director at ad agency CP + B, said of those 2018 campaigns.
“If you want to get those customers back,” he said, “you better admit you screwed up.”
Maybe it doesn’t have to acknowledge anything. Data from SimilarWeb shows that the number of downloads last week totaled more than 1.8 million – an increase of 400% from the previous week.
