Adrien Brody’s multimillion‑dollar TurboTax Super Bowl ad: Intuit’s CMO explains why the software giant spends more on marketing than R&D
Super Bowl LX was just the latest evidence that when it comes to marketing, Intuit punches way above its weight. The financial software company’s charming commercial stars a comically overwrought Adrien Brody being calmed by a TurboTax “expert” who assures him that there’s no need for drama or crying when you use its products and services for tax filing.
The company—also known for QuickBooks and other financial technology products and No. 258 on the Fortune 500—clearly spared no expense on its annual Super Bowl commercial. Intuit won’t say how much that 45-second ad cost, but the going rate just for the airtime was $8 million to $10 million for 30 seconds, and Brody, a two-time Oscar winner, presumably doesn’t work for the actors’ union scale.
It’s a signal of how important marketing is at Intuit. More broadly, “selling and marketing” is generally the largest expenditure in Intuit’s financial statements—larger even than research and development. The formula seems to work well: Intuit was founded in 1983 yet still increases revenue by double digits almost every year.
As for that SuperBowl spot? It was a hit: Of the 66 commercials shown in the game, Intuit’s was one of only nine given an “A” by the Kellogg School of Management’s annual Super Bowl advertising review panel.
Fortune talked recently with Intuit Chief Marketing Officer Thomas Ranese about AI, story-telling, the NFL, and more.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What’s the best way to market technology?
With technology, I do believe that in some ways humanity, creativity, insights, empathy become more precious. The companies and brands that can show up with that are the ones that can stand out. I’m not sure that story was told in a lot of the AI ads that were running on the Super Bowl, but our story—ironically as a tech company investing in AI—was all about the [human] experts [who can help customers] and make taxes drama-free.
Intuit has invested a lot in the NFL. In 2019 it became “the official financial and accounting software sponsor of the NFL,” which means companies that compete with important Intuit products can’t advertise in NFL games. Why NFL?
When people are tuning in real time, that’s when they’re most engaged, and there is no greater arena than the NFL. It’s true of live sports generally, which is why we’re partners with the NFL and now are sponsors of Los Angeles 2028 and the USA team with the Olympics. For us, it’s two of the biggest stages in the world for engaging with people in real time and being part of the culture. Plus, our athletes, whether they’re football players or Olympians, are all about success and achieving their dreams, and that’s what we’re about—we’re about prosperity.
In 2020, Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi jumped into AI with both feet. How do you use it in marketing?
I think any honest CMO will tell you it’s a journey that we’re all on together, and no one has really cracked this yet. If they say they have, I don’t believe them.
One of our best successes has been building an agentic team called the Marketing Studio to roll out in product campaigns end to end. It used to take a team of five or six groups coming together over three or four weeks to figure out, who are we targeting? What’s the message? How do we build the creative assets? Where do we place them? How do we optimize the analytics? We now have a team of AI agents that play all of those roles and within two hours can optimize campaigns. We’re seeing better conversion rates as a result.
How about other uses of AI?
For us, a lot of AI is, for example, that we can get you paid five days faster as a small business owner. That means a lot. Or we can get your tax refund five days sooner. That’s often someone’s biggest paycheck of the year. That’s the benefit of AI. It’s not some bell and whistle.
What’s the best part of your job?
Telling the customer story. That’s why I think marketers do what they do—the passion for storytelling, but telling the story of the customer, because it’s all about their success.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com