{"id":292592,"date":"2026-02-15T13:29:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T13:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/292592\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T13:29:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T13:29:11","slug":"adrien-brodys-multimillion-dollar-turbotax-super-bowl-ad-why-intuit-spends-more-on-marketing-than-rd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/292592\/","title":{"rendered":"Adrien Brody\u2019s multimillion\u2011dollar TurboTax Super Bowl ad: Why Intuit spends more on marketing than R&D"},"content":{"rendered":"

Super Bowl LX was just the latest evidence that when it comes to marketing, Intuit<\/a> punches way above its weight. The financial software company\u2019s charming commercial stars a comically overwrought Adrien Brody being calmed by a TurboTax \u201cexpert\u201d who assures him that there\u2019s no need for drama or crying when you use its products and services for tax filing. <\/p>\n

The company\u2014also known for QuickBooks and other financial technology products and No. 258 on the Fortune 500\u2014clearly spared no expense on its annual Super Bowl commercial. Intuit won\u2019t 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\u2019t work for the actors\u2019 union scale. \u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a signal of how important marketing is at Intuit. More broadly, \u201cselling and marketing\u201d is generally the largest expenditure in Intuit\u2019s financial statements\u2014larger even than research and development. The formula seems to work well: Intuit was founded in 1983 yet\u00a0 still increases revenue by double digits almost every year.<\/p>\n

As for that SuperBowl spot? It was a hit: Of the 66 commercials shown in the game, Intuit\u2019s was one of only nine given an \u201cA\u201d by the Kellogg School of Management\u2019s annual Super Bowl advertising review panel.<\/p>\n

Fortune talked recently with Intuit Chief Marketing Officer Thomas Ranese about AI, story-telling, the NFL, and more.<\/p>\n

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the best way to market technology?<\/p>\n

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\u2019m not sure that story was told in a lot of the AI ads that were running on the Super Bowl, but our story\u2014ironically as a tech company investing in AI\u2014was all about the [human] experts [who can help customers] and make taxes drama-free.<\/p>\n

\"\"Intuit\u2019s Chief Marketing Officer, Thomas Ranese.<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Intuit<\/p>\n

Intuit has invested a lot in the NFL. In 2019 it became \u201cthe official financial and accounting software sponsor of the NFL,\u201d which means companies that compete with important Intuit products can\u2019t advertise in NFL games. Why NFL?<\/p>\n

When people are tuning in real time, that\u2019s when they\u2019re most engaged, and there is no greater arena than the NFL. It\u2019s true of live sports generally, which is why we\u2019re partners with the NFL and now are sponsors of Los Angeles 2028 and the USA team with the Olympics<\/a>. For us, it\u2019s 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\u2019re football players or Olympians, are all about success and achieving their dreams, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re about\u2014we\u2019re about prosperity.<\/p>\n

In 2020, Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi jumped into AI with both feet. How do you use it in marketing?<\/p>\n

I think any honest CMO will tell you it\u2019s a journey that we\u2019re all on together, and no one has really cracked this yet. If they say they have, I don\u2019t believe them.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019re seeing better conversion rates as a result.<\/p>\n

How about other uses of AI?<\/p>\n

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\u2019s often someone\u2019s biggest paycheck of the year. That\u2019s the benefit of AI. It\u2019s not some bell and whistle.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the best part of your job?<\/p>\n

Telling the customer story. That\u2019s why I think marketers do what they do\u2014the passion for storytelling, but telling the story of the customer, because it\u2019s all about their success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Super Bowl LX was just the latest evidence that when it comes to marketing, Intuit punches way above…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[366,146,85,46,365,34880],"class_list":{"0":"post-292592","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-advertising","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-marketing","13":"tag-super-bowl"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}