The experience greeted the user with a short video — delivered via pre-roll and high-impact banner — featuring an inherently likeable slacker on a couch. When users chose “procrastinate” they were served a 5—10 second clip of procrastination inspiration. With each click, one of 50 different time-wasting scenes would unfold. At any point in the experience users could click “start your taxes” prompting a final video with a round of cheers and a celebratory balloon drop and then they were redirected to hrblock.com to begin filing.

The impact of the rollout was immediate. On Hulu, 94% viewers watched the complete intro ad and an astounding 14% of those viewers chose to forego their programming to continue interacting with the videos. Over 17,000 viewers spent 8+ minutes clicking “procrastinate” to watch every single clip. On YouTube, the interaction rate was 7x the industry standard, hitting 475,000 hours of viewing in just ONE day. This gave H&R Block huge brand exposure and helped gain 3.6 million more impressions with click-through rates 4x industry benchmarks. What’s more, online returns for H&R Block grew 10.7%.