Although Tax Day (April 15) should be a time for H&R Block’s efforts to shine, it is instead taken over by headlines that put the brand not on the side of taxpayers, but on the side of entities that steal taxpayers’ hard-earned money. In 2019, the battle for Tax Day was to be tougher than ever, with headlines dominated by tax reform laws, many of which included H&R Block by association. So in order to interrupt the negativity and show that H&R Block truly empathizes with its customers, we decided that in 2019, we would take back Tax Day and create positive conversation around a typically unfavorable subject.

On the most stressful day of the year, we turned Tax Day into Relax Day by livestreaming the most relaxed animal on the planet: a sloth. Starting at 9AM EST, #SlothStream featured Paco the Sloth relaxing in our H&R “Block”—a green environment inspired by our logo. A relaxing ambient soundtrack set the mood, creating a continuous atmosphere of calm for the whole 12-hour stream. Throughout the day, we kept viewers engaged with polls to decide what relaxing snack or toy we should give Paco. He relaxed with a blueberry smoothie. He relaxed with a baby sloth plushie. But most importantly, he relaxed America on Tax Day and helped last-minute filers find a moment of zen.

Our challenge for Tax Day was to create a brand moment that audiences could authentically embrace on a day clouded with negativity and stress. We knew that audiences wouldn’t need further reminders to do their taxes. So instead, our approach was to find those in need of a relaxing moment, and offer them our stream as aid in the most seamless way possible. From past years, we predicted that #TaxDay would continue to trend on Twitter, providing the most potential for organic visibility than other channels. We also knew that the most fraught, political conversations happen on Twitter -- but so does the spread of quirky, wholesome content. This provided an opportunity: by intersecting the negativity with loveable, internet-ty content, we could actively redirect all the anxieties of taxes towards an ownable and truer sentiment of relaxing post-tax stress.

Our goal for the day was to extend relaxation to everyone who needed it on Tax Day, whether it was person, animal, or brand. #SlothStream began at 6AM PST, sharing Paco’s calming vibes for 12 hours until 6PM. Paco was filmed in front of a serene, green background with three cameras directed in livetime to ensure that the stream captured the most calming angles at all times. Ambient mood music was looped to create a continuous sense of calm. Along with a promoted tweet utilizing actual footage, we searched for people on Twitter expressing #TaxDay stress, and shared the link along with a gif pulled and created in realtime to invite them into the stream. To really make viewers feel welcomed into the calm, we promoted three unique Twitter polls that let viewers contribute to Paco’s relaxation methods and invite them back into the stream throughout the day.

While we predicted that Tax Day would be tough, we didn’t realize just how tough: conversations intensified midday when high-profile politicians including Bernie Sanders and Beto O’Rourke released their tax returns to the public. Additionally, news of a destructive fire at the Notre Dame cathedral and chatter about the season eight premiere of Game of Thrones created a hectic time to harness attention on Twitter. But the intensified stress worked to our advantage: despite the day’s chaos, over 3.68M viewers tuned in to relax with Paco, with up to 10K watching concurrently at the stream’s peak. Love for Paco earned the stream 9.47M impressions along with 12M earned media impressions. More significantly for the brand, we reduced negative sentiment by 40% compared to Tax Day 2018, and for the first time in 6 years, exceeded the social share of voice of our spendier competitor TurboTax by 20%.