Featuring game show host Wayne Brady, Chime's campaign was named by Ad Age as the 2024 Breakout Brand Work Winner.
The campaign was inspired by two statistics: that charitable giving had declined in both 2022 and 2023, and that 65% of Americans were living paycheck-to-paycheck at the time (some surveys have put the number even higher). With 10 participants facing setbacks in their journey to achieve financial goals, Chime offered to pay twice the desired sum for half of them. The climax of the experiment was whether or not the participants would choose to split their payments with the other half of the group to unknowingly unlock a $1 million prize.
Made in partnership with AKQA, the campaign outperformed all previous Chime activations, surpassing 368 million impressions within days of its launch and boosting its brand rank 15% for consumer sentiment that it cares about its customers compared to the year prior, according to the company.