Inside FCB New York's Win as New Global Creative Partner for QuickBooks

Intuit's QuickBooks has concluded a global review of its creative agencies, consolidating its account into one shop: FCB New York. FCB will be tasked with creating a new global platform for QuickBooks targeting small businesses to explain that QuickBooks is an entire suite of products that can help run their operations rather than just accounting software. FCB New York will lead the account, but other offices including FCB London, FCB Canada and R/GA Australia will be tapped to execute the global campaign in local markets. "[FCB] had really strong strategic insights and truly a broad range of creative thinking," said Javier Martin, QuickBooks' global brand development director, in an exclusive interview with Adweek, adding FCB also had a strong "hunger and desire" to become the software company's agency of record. Uber Launches Global Media Agency Review for $600 Million Account The brand formerly worked with TBWA\Chiat\Day for five years globally, except in the U.K. where Wieden+Kennedy London held the account. Martin declined to disclose who made the final round of the review, but two sources told Adweek that TBWA defended the account, while Dentsu Creative also participated and made the final round. "We had a very good working relationship with TBWA," Martin said. "I still believe TBWA is one of the best agencies in the world, but when it came down to the model that we are trying to implement for QuickBooks moving forward, FCB seemed to be the better fit." Intuit's TurboTax account is also up for review. Wieden+Kennedy is the incumbent on that account; the review is being run through MediaLink. New global platform Martin's brief to the competing agencies explained that QuickBooks wants to make it clear to small business owners that its software can "run the entirety of your business, from managing your accounting to managing your money to managing your workforce." The new platform that FCB pitched to answer that brief won't immediately go into production, which bucks trends Adweek has observed over the past year of reviews increasingly ending with agencies headed straight into production. QuickBooks is going to spend the rest of 2023 evaluating multiple ideas that FCB has brought forth, testing them and optimizing them, with the work coming out next year. Martin said the brand is close to nailing down the core insight or human truth that will drive the communication platform it will build in each market to reach small business owners. According to COMvergence, QuickBooks’ global spend reached $175 million last year, with $70 million going to digital. Martin said the brand doesn't have any immediate plans to make any drastic shifts on the distribution of that spend based on what FCB has pitched. QuickBooks is working with another IPG shop—Initiative—and Martin hopes they'll see a benefit of having a closer bond between creative and media. How QuickBooks ran the review Interestingly, Intuit was running two reviews simultaneously, with QuickBooks operating its review in-house while the ongoing TurboTax review is using a consultant. Martin had a clear reason why QuickBooks kept it in-house. "We wanted to have just a very, very close grip on the process because it was really important for us to experience the ups and downs and really understanding the different agencies," Martin said. "We didn't want to risk anything being lost in translation by working with a third party." To formulate its shortlist of agencies, Martin said the brand evaluated a number of factors, including previous work that showed interesting ways of communicating similar challenges to theirs, information in the trades, agency rankings, the kind of work and how they presented it at Cannes and the Effies, as well as consulting experts in the space. T-Mobile Opens Up About Why It Chose Initiative in 2021 Media Agency Review "We spoke to a number of agencies who we felt strongest about, and then depending on how we felt and how they reacted to our challenge, we narrowed the list more and more until we got to a list of world-class agencies," Martin said. He recommended that brands really spend time listening to people who study agencies because ultimately they were happy with how their prep work led to a "strong bench of agencies." Martin also gave insight into three points of differentiation for how FCB handled the pitch that were key factors in their decision making: Martin said QuickBooks is a very data-first company. FCB understood that from the start and everything it pitched was steeped in data. FCB brought a broad range of thinking to tackle problems in a variety ways. "The range that was shown by FCB—the ability to think strategically in different ways, and the ability to derive creative ideas against those strategies and insights—was very impressive." Soft skills matter: "The FCB team came across as a very harmonic and cohesive team from day one, from my first WhatsApp message to Emma Armstrong, who is the CEO of FCB New York," Martin said, adding that it was refreshing to see an agency with no past connection to the business pursue it so eagerly. For FCB, it's one of several notable account wins over the past year, as the New York office in particular has picked up work with Budweiser and the New York Mets. The agency has also snagged work with Clorox’s Hidden Valley Ranch and Kimberly-Clark's Kotex brand.