What it had to solve
Finspo, a digital broker that also helps users manage all their banking, launched a free app that uses customers' actual data to show what their banking costs and where the hidden savings are. Launching a new brand in a cluttered space, it needed work that was bold and attention-grabbing.
The idea
Hide the word 'money' inside camouflage art on street posters and digital: to get the ad, you have to find the hidden savings — the format demonstrates the product.
How it works
Camouflage art with 'money' concealed inside it ran across high-traffic urban street posters, large format and digital, with media strategy and buying by Gravia; The Royals built the brand from scratch, from strategy and experience design to the campaign.
What it did
The campaign put an unknown fintech brand into Australian streets and feeds at launch. The material reports no user or download figures; its stated aim was attracting new users to the app.
Background
Finspo, an Australian fintech start-up, launched in March 2021 as a new breed of digital broker: a free app that uses customers' actual banking data to show what their banking is really costing them and where hidden savings sit — built on the premise that for many Australian households, banking is their largest single weekly expense.
For the launch, The Royals hid the word 'money' inside distinctive camouflage art across high-traffic urban street posters, large-format sites and digital. The device is the demo: no matter how hard the savings are hidden, they can be found — with Finspo's help. ECD Seb Vizor said the agency built the brand from scratch and believed rewarding the audience with hidden detail as they engage makes the work more memorable.
Finspo CMO Dylan Keath framed the goal as helping Australians build better banking habits and save big, with the campaign in market to attract new users to the app. Media strategy and buying was handled by Gravia.
Why it lands
The ad's form mirrors the product's function: hunting hidden 'money' in the artwork is the same act as hunting hidden savings in your bank data.
A discovery mechanic buys attention in a cluttered launch category — the viewer does the work and keeps the reward.
It gave a no-name start-up an ownable visual device (camouflage) rather than category clichés of charts and percentages.
What you can take
When the product's benefit is 'finding what's hidden', make the ad itself hide something: the small reward of discovery teaches the proposition better than a headline could.
Since then
The material records the March 2021 launch campaign in market across street posters, large format and digital. No later performance data appears in the source.
FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE