Digital Strategy:
Humanizing a Financial Giant: H&R Block’s TS25 Integrated Social Machine
Industry: Financial Services / Tax Preparation (B2C & B2B)
Channel: Social (Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit, Pinterest and LinkedIn)
January 2025 – May 2025
The Challenge: H&R Block identified historical gaps in its social media strategy, characterized by "one-size-fits-all" creative that failed to resonate with modern filers. The primary objective for TS25 was to build an integrated model that balanced brand-building awareness (70%) with performance-driven conversion (30%). The brand needed to break "switching apathy" among DIY filers and attract new demographics—specifically Gen Z, Gig Workers, and "Skilled Strivers"—by proving that H&R Block understands the daily financial complexities of their lives.
Winning Approach: The strategy was built on three core principles: True Practitionership (rectifying historical execution gaps), Inextricably Integrated Media & Creative, and 24/7 Hands-on-Keyboards monitoring. We adopted a "Creative is the Targeting" mindset, developing bespoke assets for specific cohorts rather than broad-stroke messaging. A standout tactic was the CasC (Comments as Creative) strategy, which used real-time social listening to turn community insights into organic content. We also pioneered an Organic-to-Paid Amplification pipeline, where high-performing organic assets were quickly scaled via paid media, bypassing the slower, traditional production cycles.
The Results
+2.2x
YoY increase in total filings (Retail, BA, and DIY)
2.01%
Click-through rate on hyper-specific audience creative (e.g., 1099-K for Gig Workers)
1,000+
Total Social Media Assets (SMAs) delivered across the funnel
1.2k
Community comments leveraged to fuel organic-to-paid SMA development
667K+
Total likes generated through the CasC (Comments as Creative) strategy
99%
View-through rates on top-performing Awareness RTBs (Reasons to Believe)
Key Insights: The TS25 campaign proved that financial services social strategy wins when it prioritizes human-centric transparency over corporate utility, specifically by acknowledging the emotional pain of "wasted money" and the messy complexities of taxpayers' daily lives. By pivoting to a "Creative is the Targeting" model—where bespoke assets like the high-performing "Receipt" format for SMBs or "TikTok Creator Challenges" for Gen Z replaced broad messaging—the brand achieved hyper-relevance across the funnel. This data-driven integration of media and creative not only broke the barrier of switching apathy through upfront pricing tools but also established that amplifying organic community sentiment (via the "Comments as Creative" strategy) is the most efficient engine for driving lower-funnel conversion and record-breaking filing volume.