skills/creative-director/references/legendary-campaigns/cards/expensify-expensify-this-2018.md

---
id: expensify-expensify-this-2018
title: "Expensify This"
brand: Expensify
year: 2018
country: US
region: north_america
industry: tech_telco
pattern: [P11]
category: film
idea_type: campaign
involvement: passive_view
channel: digital
duration: campaign
goal: [awareness, trial]
budget: medium
emotion: [ironic_sincerity, ironic]
emotion_tier: 3
insight_domain: joy
media_epoch: viral_first
awards: [unknown]
quality_score: 6
scalability: unique
risk: edgy
confidence: medium
quality: stub_enriched
source_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU3fit1MFKY
---

# Expensify This (Expensify · 2018)

## Insight

Expense reporting is everyone's least favorite work task — even rockstars have to do it. Expensify is the brand that acknowledges the absurdity of the category.

## Mechanic

Music video with rapper 2 Chainz and Lil Dicky celebrating the glamour of expensing things, turning the mundane act of submitting receipts into an aspirational lifestyle statement via full hip-hop production.

## Why it worked

Absurdism as carrier: by taking the category's most boring feature (receipt submission) and staging it in the genre least associated with accounting, the contrast became the joke and the brand became memorable in a category where no one has a personality.

## Steal

Find the most boring function of your product. Ask what genre of culture could not be further from that function. Collide them completely. The gap is the humor.

## Related
- Pattern: [[../MOC-pattern.md#p11]]
- Sibling: [[metro-trains-dumb-ways-to-die-2012.md|Dumb Ways to Die]]
- Sibling: [[old-spice-man-your-man-could-smell-like-2010.md|The Man Your Man Could Smell Like]]
- Emotion match: [[absolut-absolut-campaign-1981.md|Absolut _____]]

---

*Author: Serge Shima ([t.me/aimastersme](https://t.me/aimastersme) · [sergeshima.com](https://sergeshima.com) · [aimasters.me](https://aimasters.me)) · License: CC BY 4.0 — attribution required · Source: [smixs/creative-director-skill](https://github.com/smixs/creative-director-skill)*