Small business financial platform Xero, fresh off growing success in the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand, is mounting its biggest global expansion yet in the U.S., with the help of agency Argonaut.
The move is powered by AI production that helped the team create 600 campaign variations for eight markets in just eight weeks.
Argonaut was tapped by Xero as lead creative agency for a new global brand campaign. Rather than leaning on standard production playbooks, the team built a campaign framework that pairs emotional storytelling with an AI-driven engine.
The “Win the 3×3” growth strategy, under CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, focuses on dominating three core functions (accounting, payroll, and payments) across three key geographic markets (Australia/New Zealand, the U.K., and now, North America). This includes stepped-up investments and strategic acquisitions — like its $2.5 billion Melio buyout — to directly challenge QuickBooks.
The team recognized that a small business’ relationship with accounting is in a fragile state — often seen as an exhausting burden met with emotional fatigue. The strategic insight uncovered by Xero and Argonaut was that to truly love your business, you have to embrace all parts of it. The creative work features business transformation stories highlighting a florist, café, contractor, gym, and architect to show the positive impact of Xero.
“What made this work was how well our strategic thinking and Argonaut’s research complemented each other. We’d spent time internally getting really clear on who Xero is and what small business owners need from us emotionally, not just functionally, and Argonaut brought that same rigor from the outside looking in,” said Meg Ciarallo, SVP of Brand & Marketing Communications, Xero.
The AI ‘Production Miracle’
In order to reach into multiple markets, the Xero and Argonaut teams had to account for nuances in language and culture across five continents. The answer was AI production, which allowed the teams to customize everything from the “actors” to the details of the businesses portrayed. The work was created with production house ArtClass and its post-production unit Overture, and was directed by Stewart Hendler.
Using this AI-enabled pipeline, the team produced more than 600 customized campaign assets for 8 different global markets – with specific hyper-localization for the U.S. See a sample of the many options created below.
“This was a bold swing for us. Eight markets, real local nuance in each one, on a budget and timeline that wouldn’t have worked a few years ago. Working with Argonaut and the ArtClass team, we used AI throughout production so the storytelling could stay specific, accents, shopfronts, product details, rather than flattening everything into one global version. We’re still testing and learning as we go, but it’s already changing what we think a brand our size can pull off,” said Shahin Edalati, GM, Global Head of Creative, Xero. “Alongside the campaign, we’re also capturing content with Xero’s customers amplifying their stories. Authenticity and quality have to stay at the centre of how we show up, and real customer voices will keep being a core part of how we tell Xero’s story.”
Hunter Hindman, Founder, CEO and CCO at Argonaut said that AI gave the team the ability to imagine and produce this world in ways that wouldn’t have been possible before, though the technology was never the idea.
“The idea — and the judgment behind every creative choice — remained deeply human. What’s exciting about this moment is that AI can remove some of the traditional constraints of production and give creative teams a much bigger canvas. For ‘Love Changes Everything,’ that meant we could build a world as imaginative and transformational as the idea itself, while still being incredibly intentional about the craft, emotion and humanity at the center of it,” said Hindman.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
