Making tax time easier

The end of every tax year can trigger a lot of different feelings. Stress for some and a well-earned exhale for others. Either way, dealing with taxes can be complicated, which is why we’ve been on a mission to make the whole process easier for New Zealanders.

This year we used a phased approach to educate people about ways to avoid a tax bill, engage them with tips to keep details up to date, and inform them of tax assessment timings. Visually, our hero brand characters Ivy and Rikki remained, albeit in a refreshed visual world with additional graphical elements to bring life to the world of tax they were talking about.

Building on our End of Tax Year mahi with Inland Revenue from previous years, we doubled down on clear, straightforward messaging across multiple media channels. This resulted in our strongest end-of-tax-year campaign results yet – within the same budget envelope as last tax season, bringing 35% more cost efficiency and 42% more people visiting the Inland Revenue website.

When you strip away the tax jargon and meet people where they are, taxes feel a lot less daunting. By keeping our message simple and relatable, we helped more Kiwis get what they needed out of this tax season.

We look forward to building on that momentum in our future work with IR.

"Hemisphere built on their understanding of our audience and previous campaign learnings to help shape an effective End of Tax Year campaign. Their recommendations were practical, well considered and helped us deliver a campaign that achieved strong results." – Inland Revenue.

A cartoon character of a Mum holding her young child, the background is a strong purple and there is white text reading "Receive working for families?".

An ad showing cartoon characters named Ivy and Rikki explaining income tax with tax codes between them and text reading "Used the right tax code during the year" with a yellow background.

An ad showing cartoon characters named Ivy and Rikki explaining income tax with a bar chart behind them and text reading "Are you using the right investor rate" with a yellow background.

Cartoon character named Ivy standing by text that reads 20% increase in campaign exposure with a pale blue background behind.

Cartoon character named Rikki pointing at text that reads 35% increase on campaign engagement with a pale blue background behind.

Making tax time easier

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