FactSet, a global financial digital platform and enterprise solutions provider, has partnered with Chicago-based creative agency VSA Partners to unveil a second round of spots in its “Not Just the Facts” campaign. The campaign originally launched in April this year with impressive results.
The campaign was built on a core strategic insight: While quality data is critical for financial professionals, facts in isolation provide little value. FactSet’s personalization, data connectivity, open and flexible technology, and dedicated service and support provide the context necessary for the investment community to turn facts into valuable insights—and make the most of them.
The new creative picks up where the previous left off. This time it focuses on a particularly boorish office worker, drolly played by character actor Wyndham Maxwell, who ticks off an encyclopedic list of facts and non sequiturs during business meetings and in an elevator to the bemusement of his colleagues.
The tongue-in-cheek campaign, which plays more like a perfect-pitch comedy series than a typical B2B commercial effort, is unlike anything else in the financial services industry—both in its use of humor and in its humanistic approach. Starting this week, FactSet will roll out 16 unique spots—a combination of :30s, :15s, :06s and nine “shorts”—across multiple channels including digital, streaming and CTV.
“We are thrilled with the success of our bold ‘Not Just the Facts’ campaign, which emphasizes what sets the FactSet brand apart: not just the breadth and depth of our data offering, but the intelligent solutions and advanced technology that contextualize it for global finance professionals,” said Jenifer Brooks, Chief Marketing Officer at FactSet. “We’re proud of how the campaign’s direct and relatable tone, which challenges industry norms, has resonated with audiences. As we look toward this next phase of the campaign, we will continue to bring fresh perspectives and empathetic storytelling to demonstrate the value of our offerings.”
The first round of the “Not Just the Facts” campaign earlier this year achieved outstanding results, resonating deeply and driving significant engagement. The spots achieved 193 million impressions with a 98% increase in click-through rates and a 36% rise in video view-through rates across the campaign platform.
“Humor is an incredible way to connect with audiences—and the results we saw in round one of the campaign confirm it,” said Kim Mickenberg, Associate Partner and Executive Creative Director at VSA. “In ‘Not Just the Facts,’ we’ve built a platform that lets us entertain and engage our audiences while telling a really clear, compelling story about what makes FactSet so different. We’re so proud of the work and all the collaboration that went into it.”
Los Angeles–based Docter Twins Matthew and Jason Docter directed the original campaign and this new work through their production company, Thinking Machine. The identical twin brothers grew up in the Midwest and were heavily influenced by classic comedy directors like the Coen brothers and John Hughes. Their work is known for a subtle sensibility that balances smart performance and cinematic style with a witty flair for storytelling.
“It’s tough to choose a favorite line when working with the amazing team at VSA,” said the Docter Twins. “Two of our favorites from this go-round are “‘Trees can recognize their siblings’ and ‘Some dinosaurs had really tiny arms…and could probably only bench press like 400 lbs.’
“VSA’s Kim [Mickenberg], Megan [Schulist, creative director], and Bryan [Haney, motion producer] are never short on ideas.
“And with a client like [global head of brand] Christina Sradj and others at FactSet willing to let us riff, the actors find a playful space and never let up. They were best friends by the end of the shoot, which sums up the fun we all had working together.”
FactSet (NYSE: FDS) helps the financial community to see more, think bigger, and work better. Our digital platform and enterprise solutions deliver financial data, analytics, and open technology to nearly 8,000 global clients, including over 206,000 individual users. Clients across the buy side and sell side as well as wealth managers, private equity firms, and corporations achieve more every day with our comprehensive and connected content, flexible next-generation workflow solutions, and client-centric specialized support. As a member of the S&P 500, we are committed to sustainable growth and have been recognized as one of the Best Places to Work in 2023 by Glassdoor as a Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Award winner. Learn more and follow us on X and LinkedIn.
VSA’s purpose is to design for a better human experience. As a strategy and creative agency, we blend consumer insights and data with human-centered design to activate meaningful, motivating and measurable experiences in an increasingly noisy world. With offices in Chicago and New York, VSA offers a full range of integrated capabilities—branding, advertising, data science and technology—all under one roof. VSA is also a proud member of Meet The People, an international family of unified and independent agencies. For more than 40 years, we have delivered solutions for business and creative leaders at some of the world’s most respected brands and forward-thinking organizations, including Google, Nike and IBM.
Thinking Machine is a Los Angeles–based commercial production company specializing in creative storytelling.
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Welcome to the wonderful world of strategy: the best, most interesting and arguably the most ambiguous job in this business. I understand there’s some confusion as to what exactly strategy is—given that my family still doesn’t understand what I do because there’s no main character from “Mad Men” to align it with—and therefore who’s likely to make a great strategist.
Strategy is the discipline formerly known as account planning. Back when account planning was invented, it was about understanding a broad target audience, gleaning insights and writing briefs that served as springboards for great work. And great work was limited to a much smaller number of mass media channels at that time: print, TV, OOH. Obviously, the world has changed a lot since then and with it, the practice of planning. The term strategy came about to encompass the broadening of the discipline’s scope—to include brand strategy, creative strategy, communications strategy, design strategy, digital strategy, social strategy and depending where you work, a fair amount of corporate strategy as well.
Well, that sounds daunting. What does it mean? While you can specialize in virtually any of the things listed above, strategy tends to be best suited for people with varied interests and an insatiable curiosity about almost anything and really, everything. A strategist’s primary job is the connection of disparate and sometimes seemingly unrelated dots to create a plan that solves a problem for a business and for a consumer. We still write briefs to inspire great creative work, but our job goes well beyond that today.
As strategists, we have an opportunity to shape and create better experiences for human beings. We have the power to encourage brands and companies to represent themselves more honestly, to impact how people across different genders and races see themselves represented in media, and to challenge our collective thinking about the way things are—and the way they could be.
A great strategist is part anthropologist (a student of cultures), part sociologist (a student of people and how we are shaped by our society), part psychologist (someone who seeks to understand the human mind and what makes us behave the ways we do), part analyst (adept at reading and interpreting data to uncover hidden truths about our habits) and part creative (skilled storytellers who are energized at the prospect of changing how people think, feel or act via inspiring work).
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: Most strategists don’t start out as strategists. They take winding paths, ones that often begin in other disciplines within an agency, a related field or a different field entirely. There’s no right path, so don’t worry if you haven’t done all the “right” things. (If you secure an internship in strategy, you’re ahead of the game.) While few strategists share the same background, good ones often share similar traits. And you can highlight these traits in interviews, even if you don’t have much formal strategy experience yet.
The best strategists always seek to understand why something happens the way it does—or what makes someone do the things they do. Great strategists ask a lot of questions and enjoy spending time trying to figure people and things out. They tend to be people with varied interests, who demonstrate both an enthusiasm for and a commitment to learning new things.
Likely related to our curiosity, strategists tend to be people watchers who recognize that we learn more from watching how humans behave rather than simply listening to what they say. The best strategists are not only fascinated by people, but they naturally tend toward empathy and compassion—finding it easy to put themselves in someone else’s shoes and understand what they want and need without judgment or criticism. They embrace the humanity in any situation.
Standout strategists are equally good at talking to people and listening to what they have to say. Listening leads strategists to compelling insights rooted in real human truths, which lay the foundation for engaging stories. Great strategists are dynamic storytellers who possess the ability to make the incredibly complex feel simple—or at the very least, logical and easily digestible. And it’s not enough to be exceptional writers; strategists must also be highly skilled at presenting their ideas to a broad range of audiences.
As strategists, we deal heavily in possibility and opportunity. Great strategists are drawn to and excited by the prospect of solving complex and often layered problems, but also energized by possibilities. They possess the business acumen to understand not only how a business works today, but the imagination and the optimism to envision how it might work better tomorrow.
Great strategists are creative people who appreciate and voraciously consume creative content in myriad forms: books, films, plays, shows, stories, articles, podcasts—the list goes on and on. Exposure to a continuous flow of creative stimulus provides fresh perspective and inspires strategists to think about the problems they’re tasked with solving in new ways, helping them draw parallels, frame challenges and communicate opportunities in ways they otherwise may not have. This ultimately helps them to become better partners to their creative teammates.
If the above description sounds like you, find ways to demonstrate these traits in your interviews. Strategy is an endlessly fascinating field for those that love a challenge–and we’re always looking for critical thinkers and courageous creators who are unafraid to shake things up in order to make them better.
Interested in pursing a career in strategy? Check out VSA’s open positions.
