TD Ameritrade, the official online brokerage sponsor of the U.S. Olympic Team, has rolled out a new ad campaign that features seven TD Ameritrade-sponsored athletes and "draws a parallel between the competitors’ lifelong journey to the Olympics and the fortitude required of long-term investors," according to Andrew Newman of the N.Y. TIMES. One spot "opens with snowboarder Louie Vito, who is seen spraying Champagne from a bottle after a victory." The spot then features clips that "run in reverse, each receding further back in time, with Mr. Vito snowboarding backward up a hill in a recent clip, and snowboarding as an adolescent." As the clips get older, "they are clearly family videos." The spots featuring Vitowill "begin appearing on television and online" today. However, closing footage of Vito was "staged, shot recently using actors in a grainy, home-movie style." Other TD Ameritrade spots, "some of which use several clips with younger actors pretending to be the athletes, contain no disclosure about doing so." The creative was from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, S.F., while a "social media extension of the campaign" is from Huge, Brooklyn. TD Ameritrade Dir of Marketing & Corporate Sponsorship Dedra DeLilli said the campaign was meant to "talk more about long-term investing tools and programs." In what the brand is "calling a first, it also is sending seven athletes, aged 14 to 21," to the '14 Sochi Games, "who are not competing but hope to qualify" for '18. The hopefuls "compete in the same sports as the sponsored Olympic athletes, who will act as their mentors." In addition, every time consumers "use the hashtag #itaddsup, the company will add $1 to a fund that will be split equally in their accounts, with each receiving a total of as much as $25,000" (N.Y. TIMES, 12/9).
