Klarna was founded in 2005 to disrupt old forms of credit - such as credit cards. Rather than charging the buyer interest, it charges the retailer a fee, flipping the model on its head whilst allowing the customer to ‘Buy now, pay later’ in a flexible way.

By 2021, Klarna had become the largest independent fintech in Europe, but because of unfamiliarity in the UK was subject to a wave of false claims in newspaper articles and social media posts - such as charging interest to customers, targeting youth, encouraging debt and more.

We were asked to come up with an idea that could help set the record straight and build trust among shoppers aged 25-45, finance commentators, businesses and the media, informing them of the facts about what Klarna really offers - while building the brand’s disruptive, distinctive reputation.

With false claims being written so frequently, we knew simply denying the ‘myths’ would have little impact on our audience.

So we decided to tackle the misconceptions head on. We took the haters’ own words and turned them into 7 mythical paintings. Working with artist Ignasi Monreal, we made these pieces as epic, beautiful and eye-catching as possible.

For 4 weeks, we put all 7 artworks up as giant murals in busy shopping areas of the UK’s biggest cities, and as an Outdoor takeover of Waterloo Station where we could reach all our audiences at once.

The idea was for the paintings to stop people in their tracks, then invite them - with QR codes artfully integrated into the artwork - to our virtual gallery.

Once there, they could explore the mythical paintings in depth, find the facts hidden in them - and discover the truth for themselves.

The insight underpinning the campaign was that simply denying the ‘myths’ or telling our audiences the facts wouldn’t really change their minds. We needed to get them to think critically, discovering the truth for themselves - rather than having it forced on them unwillingly.

Our core target audience was shoppers aged 25 to 44 - the age group who use Klarna the most. But this was also an exercise in improving Klarna’s reputation to the wider UK public, including journalists and finance regulators.

All 7 artworks went up as giant murals in busy shopping areas of London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and as an outdoor takeover around Waterloo Station, allowing us to reach all our audiences at once. We then took press-worthy photos of them and distributed them to consumer and business titles alongside links to our virtual gallery, gaining coverage beyond footfall and social sharing.

The 7 giant murals and the Waterloo outdoor takeover all went up on 10 May, 2021. We had nothing to hide so we chose the biggest sites in the busiest shopping areas. They stayed up for 4 weeks until the end of the campaign period on 6 June.

With these giant murals going up in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, we had the major cities of England all covered from North to South.

These assets in the physical world used QR codes (artfully integrated into the mythical paintings as flying angels, music speakers, shopping bags and chunky rings) to take people to the virtual gallery where they could explore the paintings more and find the facts hidden in them.

As a further incentive, we offered prizes for people as a reward for discovering the truth themselves.

The campaign received positive media coverage in 142 news publications (national and regional) and 52 pieces of editorial coverage (including Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Grazia, Attitude and Men’s Health) - combining to a total reach of 52 million.

160,000 people took up the invitation from our mythical paintings and visited the virtual gallery to hunt down the facts hidden in them. 45,000 found all 7 truths and were entered into our prize draw, allowing us to collect their data for future marketing.

After the 4 week campaign, brand trust for Klarna was up from 58% to 67% (source: BrandVue), and positive sentiment towards Klarna rose by 52% (source: BrandVue).

We also increased monthly active users of the Klarna app by 7.3% from May 2021 to July 2021 with no other media activity running. (source: Statista/Airnow Data).