Who said there can’t be any humor in finance?
Recently, FP&A companies have been getting creative with their humorous ads.
Finance is a field that is traditionally known as stable and maybe even boring. In fact, there is a whole genre of accountant jokes, mostly poking fun at the mundane and manual work that they do.
Here’s one example: (warning: no one said it will make you laugh)
Why do some accountants decide to become actuaries? They find bookkeeping too exciting.
Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) is quite similar in that it is difficult for most people outside of the field to get too excited about numbers, spreadsheets, and reports. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be any humor. Let’s take a look at a few of the leading FP&A companies bringing laughter into financial planning.
1) Datarails - Get “Sheet” Done
Datarails, a leading FP&A software company for small and medium businesses created an advertising campaign based on the word “sheet”. It turns out there’s quite a few ways to use the word!
Here are a few highlights:
“As a CFO I like getting sheet done”
“Datarails keeps my sheet in Excel, and I love that sheet!”
“People can we keep our sheet together”
“Don’t waste your time manually working on a sheetload of data”
In addition to being humorous, using the word “sheet” fits Datarails quite well. It is a native Excel platform, meaning “unlike other companies that want to take my sheet elsewhere” (as he says in the video) customers can keep using their own spreadsheets when they use Datarails.
This saves a lot of time on implementation and allows customers to keep using their own data environments that they are used to.
2) Workday - Rockstar Super Bowl Commercial
Workday put their humor on display on the most anticipated advertising stage of the year - the superbowl. Workday, a corporate level finance and HR software company, poked fun at the way many corporations call each other “rockstars”.. by having real rockstars “star” in their campaign.
Ozzy Osbourne, Gary Clark Jr., and KISS’s Paul Stanley were a few of the real-life rockstars who made their appearance in the super bowl commercial.
Stanley, in his signature makeup from his days with KISS starts off the video: “Hey corporate types - would you stop calling each other rockstars?”
“Oh Ted in Finance, you’re a rockstar,” Osbourne says sarcastically.
“Hey Liz from HR, can you do this?” Clark Jr. says while playing an impressive guitar solo.
Workday’s super bowl commercial fits well with their customer type as they cater to large organizations and corporations, exactly the type of people they poke fun at in the advertisement.
Workday’s software improves both HR and finance through automation and data consolidation.
3) The Office - Not a real finance company, but humorous nonetheless
And you can’t forget about some laughs from David Wallace, the CFO from the hit show “The Office”. The show managed to make every day office occurrences humorous - even in the finance department.