We all know the E-Trade baby, and everybody seems to love those ads. But aren't they getting a bit stale? I mean, even when they have new ads with other babies, it's still babies with tablets and smartphones talking like adults about investing with E-Trade. And they're fun, but why not mix it up a bit just to keep it interesting and so people don't get sick of it?
So here's my idea for a new take on this E-Trade baby campaign: The E-Trade parents. We all know the E-Trade baby and what he's like, but how did he get this way? Why, obviously he inherited it from his parents! And so I would propose that E-Trade make a new series of ads based upon the E-Trade baby's parents, beginning with the E-Trade father.
This E-Trade father ad would essentially combine the E-Trade baby with How I Met Your Mother in concept, showing the baby's future father as a thirty-something successful professional in New York City, dating lots of different women, while being a mover & a shaker in his career. And like so many people do these days, our hero, the future dad of the E-Trade baby, likes to play with his iPhone, checking on his investments with the E-Trade iPhone app, even on dates. Well, some women might be annoyed if he appeared to be ignoring them from time-to-time on a date by playing with his iPhone, but it happens that he's on a date with an extremely attractive woman who also happens to recognize that what he's doing is checking up on his investments with E-Trade. And she can't help but notice that his investment portfolio is going up and up and up, and so she takes this as a sign that they were meant to be together, because what do you know but she also loves checking her investments on her E-Trade iPhone app! And so they get married and have the E-Trade baby, and he's just the same way, loving playing the stock market on mobile devices with E-Trade.
And for even more fun, the ad could have a longer web version people can come watch if they like the TV version, and this one would begin in a similar fashion to How I Met Your Mother, with a kid asking about how his father met his mother. And so it would begin with a new E-Trade baby playing with her E-Trade iPhone app on her iPhone in her crib at night after her bedtime, covered by her nightlight so her parents don't notice, and then the camera swings up and out of the room, down the hall, and through a cracked doorway to show a young boy of about six years-old being put to bed, and he asks his father, whose turn it is to put the kids to bed, how he met his mother. And so the E-Trade father ("the E-Trade baby daddy"?) tells his young son, the (purported) former E-Trade baby from earlier commercials, about how he was working and dating in the city, and he dated a number of women, and some of them didn't understand why he wanted to check up on his investments on his smartphone with the E-Trade iPhone app (that lets you manage your portfolio remotely from wherever you are, and can be customized into whatever window works best for you, yadda yadda...), until one day he met his mother and found a way to ask her out on a date when he saw her E-Trade investment monitor screen on her iPad while she was doing something else, like sitting at the fountain at Lincoln Center during lunchtime, or sitting on a bench at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or something like that. And so when they went to dinner together, he reflexively checked his investment portpolio on his iPhone, she noticed, found that they shared an interest in investing and such, and seeing him to be a serious and capable man with a solid and secure financial future, she decided he was "the one", and he felt the same way too, and so after a few more dates, he "put her to the question", um, I mean, he "popped the question", she said "yes", and they got married, shortly thereafter producing the now-famous E-Trade baby, replete with inbred investment savvy and a penchant for using E-Trade, the cutest and most warm and family-friendly platform for investing for your financial future!
And then, after the E-Trade father ad, they would make the E-Trade mother ad, showing us more background on the mother of the E-Trade baby, and what her side of the story is on how she met her husband. And then we could follow the E-Trade baby's parents' courtship, see the E-Trade baby's parents' wedding (and maybe even the bachelor and bachelorette parties, with both the fiancé and the fiancée ignoring the strippers their friends are drooling over because they're busy planning for their financial future on E-Trade with their iPhone apps {which even let you manage your portfolio from strip clubs and such, because after all, they're going to have a family to support, and so investment strategies are key for their future stability and prosperity!}), follow the E-Trade baby pregnancy (through Lamaze classes and the E-Trade Baby Shower, as well as the designing of the E-Trade baby's nursery and the selection of the crib, etc.), and finally make it to the big event: the E-Trade baby's birth, where the husband is so nervous that he even leaves both his iPad and his iPhone at home (and even maybe backs over one of them with his car in his spastic nervousness), and so he even has to borrow his wife's iPad at the hospital to give him a way to pass the over-anxious time at the hospital during the E-Trade baby's mother's labor, and then, after the birth, we see the E-Trade baby-mama holding her beautiful new baby boy in one arm and kissing it, while checking her investment portfolio on her iPhone in her other hand (and we see the newborn baby reach over and grasp the iPhone, as babies do with fingers and small things, and the mother and father see this, look at each other, and smile, because they can tell that the baby is going to inherit their passion for investing with E-Trade and become a successful investor).
See what I mean? And once this whole ad series from this campaign I'm proposing is complete, E-Trade can go back to their proven E-Trade baby ads, and I think people may even have a renewed interest beyond the cuteness factor, because now we'd all have a backstory for the baby, and we'd know him better (as well as his younger sister, who is now the new E-Trade baby, breaking the glass ceiling for E-Trade baby ad main characters), and then we could see him as the E-Trade toddler, or the E-Trade Nursery School kid. (Little kids are really cute too, not just babies, you know, E-Trade.) And through this proposed family expansion ad campaign, E-Trade could become the best-loved investment tool for the whole family, and not just for babies, who apparently are 98% of the E-Trade users currently. (Or maybe E-Trade wants an infant-only clientele, because they can be more easily tricked with fine print clauses? Nah, the truth is, babies have better eyesight than anyone, so they'd immediately notice if there was any funny stuff in the fine print section. And that's, I guess, the entire genesis for the E-Trade Baby ads to begin with: once we see the baby, we'll understand that this financial company couldn't possibly put one over on a baby, who would cry incessantly and get the company charged with child abuse if they got caught trying to defraud a baby, and so we'll know they're on the up & up! Or at least, I think that was the idea, right? {Just kidding. The baby's just cute.})
