Our idea was to take the Super Bowl, a celebration of physicality and human performance, and juxtapose it against 85-year-olds working well past their prime in demanding jobs. Our spot would serve as a reminder of what could happen without a proper financial plan.

It showcased octogenarians working as lifeguards, surgeons, and even DJs lamenting their desire to go home. These visceral depictions of working were all to the tune of “Day-O,” with its lyrics rewritten to quips like “I’m 85 and I want to go home” and sung by an elderly chorus group named Young@Heart.

“This Is Getting Old” launched as a :30 during the first quarter of the Super Bowl. The moment the spot aired, we turned on a litany of social assets that reinforced our message and leveraged moments from the spot itself across Facebook and Twitter. Not only could people see and share Boomerangs of their favorite octogenarians, they were also invited to see the extended :60 that we’d uploaded on YouTube.

After not having been present in the Super Bowl for five years, E*TRADE’s fully integrated return to the big game made a big splash. Our really old cast proved to have a really fresh and immediate impact on the brand.

The day after the game, when most people are recovering from festivities, E*TRADE experienced over 1 million site visits (a 64% increase over the previous Monday). What’s more, of the 8,179 social reactions we received, 6,928 were on the Sunday itself.

Chatter around the brand was massive; we were retweeted by verified influencers to a following of over 1.5 million and were given shout-outs by high-profile media personalities like Whoopi Goldberg on The View. The effort garnered over 956.7 million earned impressions.