AS the holiday season ends, the tax season begins, giving some revelers little reason to celebrate. A new ad campaign for Jackson Hewitt Tax Service wants to change that by getting customers to focus more on refund checks than on the actual filing of their taxes.
The new campaign, “Jackson Hewitt’s How You Do It,” is the first with the company’s new advertising agency, 22squared, which Jackson Hewitt selected in September.
Television spots feature customers celebrating after having their taxes prepared to the tune of “This Is How We Do It,” a hit song by Montell Jordan in 1995.
One spot, which promotes the company’s 3,700 storefront locations, starts with a close-up of a man pumping his fist in the air in slow motion with his mouth and eyes wide open. “This is Steve,” the announcer says as the camera shot widens to show Steve dancing on a tax preparer’s desk. “He did his taxes at Jackson Hewitt and just found out how much he’ll be getting back this year.”
As the spot ends, the camera pans out to show the entire Jackson Hewitt office, employees and customers, dancing.
Debra Dowd, the chief marketing officer at Jackson Hewitt, said the campaign was an attempt to make the tone of tax season one of celebration.
“This is a time of year that people really look forward to,” Ms. Dowd said. “Nobody’s really taken that step back and said, ‘If you’re getting a refund, is there something happy associated with it?’ ”
Another commercial highlights the company’s 15-year relationship with Walmart. This time, the person with the gaping mouth is a little girl falling into her mother’s arms after seemingly being thrown into the air after the news about the family’s refund check.
Jackson Hewitt expects to have tax preparation kiosks in 2,800 Walmart stores by the end of this year, a 40 percent increase over a year ago, Ms. Dowd said. The company is also adding to its signs in Walmart stores and will advertise in Walmart circulars. An added benefit for Walmart is that after customers learn how much their refunds will be, they may spend money in the store.
The average return for a Jackson Hewitt customer is about $3,000, Ms. Dowd said. The cost of most tax preparations can range from free for a basic form like the 1040 EZ (as a promotion), to a couple of hundred dollars.
The target audience for the new campaign is what the company calls “Main Street Americans,” people who have moderate incomes and have been hit hard by the economy.
“This is the biggest financial transaction that they have each year,” said Will Thomason, a group account director at 22squared. “They’re just really hardworking people in a tough economic environment. Seventy-five percent of them have an opportunity to get a tax refund.”
The television ads began on Jan. 2. They can be seen on cable networks like TNT, TBS, BET and AE. Radio is also a large part of the campaign, with D.J.’s in major markets like New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Chicago trying to interest listeners in Jackson Hewitt.
“They provide a level of local and community credibility,” Mr. Thomason said, adding that the disc jockeys would be used to “get people talking about Jackson Hewitt on their own terms.”
Jackson Hewitt also created a mobile application that allows customers to find a local office, estimate their tax refund or schedule an appointment. For customers whose refund checks make them so happy they want to do their own versions of the “running man” dance step, Jackson Hewitt is offering a Facebook game called Digital Dance-Off that allows players to dance along with animated characters.
Doug Kelly, an industry analyst with IbisWorld, said the Jackson Hewitt campaign came at a time when online services like Turbo Tax were “definitely a threat as far as the brick and mortar side of the industry.” Mr. Kelly estimated that 60 percent of Americans had used some form of tax preparation software.
On the flip side, recent Turbo Tax commercials have focused on offering users help from certified — and human — tax preparers. “This industry exists because tax returns are complicated enough and the penalties that exist because of inaccuracies are high enough that people turn to professionals to help them with their tax prep services,” Mr. Kelly said.
Jackson Hewitt, which emerged from bankruptcy in August, spent $12.4 million on advertising in 2010 and $13.8 million from January 2011 to September 2011, according to Kantar Media, a unit of WPP. Turbo Tax spent $81.2 million in 2010 and $91.1 million from January to September 2011.
Mr. Kelly estimated that the tax preparation industry had grown to $8.9 billion in the United States in 2011.
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