We open in small town America. An adorable young boy does handiwork with this father for the local general store. All day long he’s distracted by the most adorable puppies in the world being sold right across the street. When his dad finally gives in and tells him to go pick one out, dad realizes he has no cash. He goes inside to use the ATM, but by the time he comes out, the last puppy is gone. We’re left with the broken hearted look on his son’s face and the words, “Don’t Let ATM’s Slow You Down.” Paying off the new Digital Money Transfer feature the bank was launching.

THEN

Knowing people would be irrationally upset about our fictional story, we immediately followed it up with a personal message from our child star.

While advertising is filled with some great work, it’s also full of trite, insincere and sappy stories meant to tug on consumers heart strings for reasons completely unrelated to the product. FirstBank had the courage to take one of these themes, lure people in so they thought they knew what was happening, then yank the rug out and leave them saying WTF. It also left them with one of the more memorable spots which successfully launched one of their new services. Knowing that a portion of the target would see this as sad, instead of funny, we followed it up with personal message from our child start.