Win the Masters, you get the green jacket. Win at Colonial, you get the plaid one. Win the American Century Championship this year, and you’ll be handed a lab coat.
The Lab Coat is the work of TiNY, the independent agency behind three straight years of American Century Investments ads that air during the celebrity golf tournament the firm sponsors. It’s not a gag prop. It’s a trophy built to carry the reason American Century exists.
An investment firm that funds cancer research
American Century uses investing to generate returns for clients and for medical research, with 40% of the firm’s dividends going to the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City. That money funds work aimed at diseases that touch everyone — cancer, Alzheimer’s and the rest.
The challenge is that nobody connects an asset manager with a lab bench. “Nobody pictures medical research when they picture an investment firm,” said Rick Luchinsky, Sr. Vice President, Head of Personal Financial Solutions and Marketing at American Century. “TiNY found a way to make that core part of our purpose feel personal.”
It started as a TV spot
The idea began with a metaphor for a commercial.
“We had this classic metaphor idea,” says Mike Rovner, Chief Creative Officer at TiNY. “Every American Century investor is, in a way, a research scientist who could help cure cancer, Alzheimer’s or other diseases. So, for the TV, we put investors in lab coats out in the world.”
Director Jack Cole, out of RSA Films, shot the spots cinematically. In one, a woman finally buys the boat she’s eyed for years — in a lab coat.
In another, a father gets fitted for his daughter’s wedding, not in a tux but a lab coat. The voiceover lands it in five words: they’ve earned that lab coat.
The line that made it a trophy
The metaphor jumped off the screen in the first client meeting. “After presenting the scripts, TiNY said, ‘And you should make the lab coat your green jacket at the Championship,'” recalls Wylie Kain, Head of Brand Marketing at American Century. “I immediately said yes.”
For TiNY, that was the point — a way to keep an idea alive past its media buy. “A campaign usually ends the same day as the media buy. We wanted this one to live forever,” said Tom Christmann, Chief Marketing Officer at TiNY. “Hand the winner a real lab coat, and ‘Prosper With Purpose’ extends from American Century’s tagline to a real creative idea with legs. Or, in this case, sleeves.”
Two audiences, one image
The coat also stitches together a story that usually splits in two. “Every American Century investor is part of the fight against diseases,” said Michael Stoopack, President of TiNY. “They’re not just investors, they’re helping support scientific discoveries that make a real impact.”
Kain sees the trophy doing the connecting. “Fans watch the Championship every July. Financial advisors recommend American Century every day,” she said. “The Lab Coat hands both of them the same image to hold onto.”
The work is a follow-up to last year’s epic effort, which found TiNY making nine separate ads, each of which only aired once, and garnered the agency a Top 3 finish in the Indie Agency News Top 40.
“The American Century Championship is bigger than the Super Bowl to us at TiNY. Last year we made a campaign of spots with nine different endings for Avantis Investors. This year, we created a wearable trophy that will live forever. We love this game,” Rovner told Indie Agency News.
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