Dive Brief: 

• Intuit QuickBooks this week launched a new social content campaign, “Small Business Spotting,” to highlight real small businesses that have appeared in movies, according to details shared with Marketing Dive. The effort is timed to the Oscars, which is slated for March 12.
• QuickBooks on TikTok will spotlight various small businesses that make a cameo in 2023 Oscar-nominated films. Additionally, a Small Business Movie Guide map tracks the locations of film-featured companies, which consumers can add to by sharing sightings found within movie trailers and clips posted on TikTok and YouTube.
• The effort also includes a 60-second video and will span QuickBooks' owned social media channels. The campaign is inspired by the surge in popularity of film tourism, an activity where movie watchers travel to locations featured in various movies.

Dive Insight: 

While it’s no surprise that watching movies is a pastime favored by many, film tourism is an activity that may be less recognized but is in fact rising in popularity, a key insight behind QuickBooks’ campaign. Film tourism in 2022 was a $66 billion industry and is expected to climb to $128 billion by 2032, according to a forecast from FMI cited by the fintech company.

Capitalizing on film industry hype by timing the effort to the Oscars, one of the industry’s flashiest nights of the year, “Small Business Spotting” identifies real small businesses that have played key background roles in movies, though likely never widely recognized, and bringing them center stage. A desire to highlight such businesses follows additional research by QuickBooks finding that seven in 10 people believe small businesses should get more recognition. 

The effort, produced with TBWA\Chiat\Day LA, includes a 60-second video that will be shared across the brand’s social media channels and nods to businesses like Los Angeles-based Bob’s Market (“Fast & Furious”) and Dinah’s Family Restaurant (“The Big Lebowski”), among others.

QuickBooks is also leveraging Google Maps for its Small Business Movie Guide map, which is already populated with the details of a handful of businesses identified from movie cameos. The brand is encouraging consumers to comment on YouTube and TikTok videos of a movie trailer or clip that includes an identifiable small business with details including the company’s name and the timestamp for when it appears, noting that it would track the comments and update the map. The map can be found in the bio of QuickBooks' social media channels and could help bring the campaign full circle, inspiring consumers to visit the physical locations of identified businesses.

Additionally, Quickbooks on TikTok in the days leading up to the effort will post content highlighting real businesses that made made an appearance in 2023 Oscar-nominated films, including San Fernando Majers Coin Laundry (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”), Los Angeles Theatre (“Blonde”), Monte’s Camera Shop (“The Fabelmans”) and the Orpheum Theatre (“The Fabelmans”). 

Several other brands have leveraged movie hype to highlight small businesses as of late. In some cases, they are working directly with movie studios. For example, Mastercard last October launched a multi-channel campaign meant to celebrate Black women small business owners that had ties to Marvel’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”

For the QuickBooks campaign, the brand is leveraging consumers’ interest in movies more broadly and connecting that back to local businesses and tourism. The Small Business Movie Guide map, for example, describes the films attached to each location without actually naming them, likely because their isn’t a direct relationship with the movie studios.