Banking by Numbers: Chime launches a budgeting-based coloring book by partnering with influencers

A big chunk of finance related content on TikTok focuses on financial literacy. Most of this content comes from individual influencers, not banks. But now neobank Chime has joined forces with TikTok influencer Allison Baggerly, who teaches budgeting techniques and methods on the platform. 

While Baggerly’s techniques on the channel mostly focus on digital tools, like Excel, that can help customers budget, the partnership with Chime introduces an adult coloring book to consumers that can help them manage finances and make art at the same time. 

The coloring book

The 29 paged coloring book comes with a page for each month that has tables related to expenses and savings along with illustrations that consumers can color in while they budget. The book also has dedicated pages for consumers to draw what financial progress looks like to them and what they may be saving for. 

The tables are designed by Baggerly who translated her teachings from TikTok into a written format that could help people get started on their financial well being journey. The illustrations for the book were done by Steffi Lynn Tsai whose “upbeat style” adds an overall air of “hope” to the book, according to the neobank. 

“This process required me to think about budgeting in a completely different way! I love sharing tips for budgeting and managing money, but developing a budget in a coloring book meant I had to really think back to the basics of budgeting and how they could be translated into a physical book. It was a fun exercise to work with Steffi and Chime on creating a template that will actually work for basic budgeting, while encouraging creativity,” Baggerly told Tearsheet.

Baggerly adds that the book is a way to get people started budgeting and she hopes that it will serve as an on-ramp to more detailed digital budgeting. While budgeting is the obvious task addressed in the book, the coloring activity acts as a hook for customers and turns the possibly dry and emotionally taxing task to something fun, interactive and beautiful. 

For Chime, the coloring book, which it will sell for $1, is a way to address the lack of financial literacy in America. The neobank conducted a survey and found that 32% of Americans report learning nothing about finances in school. 

“These findings pushed us to really think about how Chime can show up during Financial Literacy Month in a way that’s impactful and helpful, but also approachable and fun for those that didn’t get the basic financial education they need while growing up. A coloring budget seemed to fit that bill perfectly as adult coloring books have become popular over the last few years as a way to tap into childlike learning and joy, but also as a way to relieve stress. We thought coloring books would couple perfectly with a task like budgeting – because budgeting doesn’t have to be stressful or intimidating,” said Jennifer Dohm, Head of Consumer Communications at Chime.

The coloring book builds upon the neobank’s recent partnership with Zogo, which offers its customers financial education materials and the ability to earn rewards. “Our partnership with Zogo and engagement with our MoneyMoves blog has shown us how engaged people become when learning is fun and interactive,” said Dohm. 

Getting consumer engagement right

A lot of traditional FIs have resources on financial education. The issue, often, isn’t that these resources don’t exist but that customers don’t engage with them in meaningful ways. 

“Banks have these beautiful websites, with great financial education content, that they’re trying to get into the hands of the consumers. But unfortunately, 90% of the clients go right through the beautiful website and go into online banking,” said Kathleen Craig, CEO and founder of Plinqit.

Similar concerns have been aired by some of the largest banks in America as well. For example, earlier this year Dr. Julie O’Brien, head of behavioral science at US Bank said that although banks can produce content that engages consumers but given the crowded nature of social media, it’s hard to control what they are exposed to. 

“We’re only one voice out of many voices, that can be very powerful, in comparison,” she said in a Tearsheet podcast. 

But what if FIs stepped out of their comfort zone and combined their voice with somebody who is already engaging 153,000 people? That is effectively what Chime and Baggerly are doing: the neobank gets access to thousands of prospective customers that already care about financial education and Baggerly reaches even more people by tapping into Chime’s consumers. 

The interesting thing about this partnership is that the amplification doesn’t stop here. The coloring book comes with a stamp of approval from the singer and rapper T-Pain, who also showed up and surprised college students with a Progress 101 class, where he shared personal finance tips and gave the students the coloring book to take home. 

This kind of celebrity plus influencer based engagement strategy is practically unseen in the industry. The last example is that of Dwayne Johnson partnering with Acorns to market the Mighty Oak card. And in that case as well, it was a fintech that was taking on this type of strategy not a traditional Wall Street bank. 

“It’s all about reliability and accessibility! When someone scrolling through TikTok sees a creator they like talking about budgeting in a fun, straightforward way, it just clicks. These influencers are breaking down the big, scary finance talk into bite-sized digestible pieces. Plus, it’s on platforms where people are already spending their time. Tradition FIs come off as formal, distant, and almost as if they are talking down to you. It’s all about meeting people exactly where they are, literally and figuratively,” said Baggerly. 

The power of influencer marketing is real, and financial brands that have acknowledged what this industry can bring to the industry are able to drive revenue and engagement, just look at Klarna. Traditional FIs often like to talk about their air of  legitimacy and trust, which helps them retain customers even in an environment that is becoming increasingly competitive. 

But what happens when the nature of trust changes away from “who my parents used to bank with” to “I grew up learning from this FinToker and I trust their advice on who I should bank with”?

This isn’t to say that there is a revolution on the horizon. Traditional banks have deep roots that aren’t likely to decay any time soon. Moreover, many neobanks have yet to figure out how to stay in the game long enough to be profitable. But their engagement strategies do show that traditional FIs may not be able to rely on an “air of legitimacy” for long if their brands seem more distant than reliable.