Money Mart is launching a new brand platform and campaign to highlight how the financial institution can help customers help their future selves.

The “Money Mart and Move On” brand platform and campaign is based on real customer stories. Like a Marvel movie, it exists in a multiverse, with characters existing in multiple time periods. The campaign’s two commercials depict a doppelganger of the protagonist, a smarter future self who advises them through a financial challenge. The ads focus on how Money Mart’s solutions can turn a difficult financial situation into something more manageable.

The campaign, which will run until the end of the summer, is Hard Work Club partner agency’s first for the brand. It comprises two online videos, with media including programmatic, search and display ads, as well as social media. It is also supported by OOH and DOOH near Money Mart locations, and in-store signage. The purchase was made internally.

“Brand building work can be done as effectively with online video as it can with traditional linear TV. We want to meet our customers where they are, and with Canadians spending two or three times more with digital media than traditional TV, that’s how we prioritized our media spend,” Money Mart chief executive officer Peter Kalen tells Media in Canada.

Kalen says the brand has been “in the dark” for a couple of years, but now, they are planning a new strategy. The platform is a first step, he says, as it will serve as a new introduction to its products. “This new platform will help distinguish ourselves from both retail competitors and the influx of online competitors that have emerged in the past few years,” Kalen says.

It is also the ideal time to launch the campaign, says Hard Work Club co-founder, brand strategy and growth, Cameron Stark. In Canada, he says, there are more than eight million people, mostly recent immigrants, who are being turned away by traditional lenders. The team wants to demonstrate that Money Mart’s loan products can help them achieve that financial flexibility that those with financial privilege take for granted, Stark notes. “It’s about real-life expenses that can turn into personal crises without financial support.”

Stark adds that advertising for financial institutions tend to all look the same. That’s why they tried to do a different job for the brand. “We wanted this work to feel like it could be part of almost any time and any place in Canada, reflecting the eight million Canadians we’re speaking to,” he says.