MONEYTREE
Money in time, since 1983
Moneytree is a family owned financial services company founded in 1983 and headquartered in Seattle. With branches across Washington, California, Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada, plus round the clock online lending, Moneytree offers check cashing, loans, money orders, and wire transfers under one promise: Money in Time.
Moneytree brought Ruckus on as its media agency partner in October 2019. What started as a paid media assignment grew into a seventh year partnership spanning search, social, programmatic, mass media, competitive intelligence, and the brand's own mascot.
A regulated category, a crowded field
Consumer lending is one of the toughest categories in advertising: heavily regulated, fiercely contested, and unforgiving of wasted spend. Lending ads live under strict platform policies and CFPB oversight, and Ruckus signed on as a compliant service provider from day one.
National players like Speedy Cash and Advance America dominate the category in every market, and Moneytree's branch network spans five western states, each needing its own localized push. The brand needed media that moved customers online and through the branch door at once.
Full funnel, five markets deep
Ruckus runs Moneytree's entire paid ecosystem: planning, buying, tracking, and reporting across every channel and every state. Paid search and social run state by state on Google, Bing, and Meta, with brand campaigns defending the name from Washington to Nevada while non-brand terms like check cashing bring in new customers.
Programmatic display runs at scale across all five markets, delivering more than a million impressions a month and reaching over 727,000 unique consumers at CPMs as low as $5.67. Radio and mass media buys run with the same digital rigor, and social listening tracks share of voice and sentiment against Moneytree's competitors, feeding decisions before the market moves.
The mascot gets a second act
Bob the Caterpillar has been Moneytree's mascot for decades, the friendly green face of its TV spots since the late 1990s. Beloved by customers but living mostly in an archive of aging commercials, Bob was ready for more. In 2022, Moneytree asked Ruckus to build him into a modern character system.
Four rounds of concept design refined Bob from sketch to signature, followed by a full 3D model, a 360 degree schematic, and a pose package. A 2D animation library brought him to life walking, running, waving, and dancing, and a character brand book delivered in 2023 codifies his traits, voice, and do's and don'ts for every future appearance.
Seven years, and the engine keeps compounding
Ruckus took over the account on January 15, 2020. Eight weeks later the world shut down, and the engine held. Monthly budgets fell from six figures to a fraction, but Ruckus re-engineered the mix so traffic dropped just 38 percent against an 80 percent cut in spend, with every remaining dollar working harder.
Seven years into the relationship, results keep climbing: an 18.69 percent Google Ads conversion rate, search click through rate up 10 percent even as budgets tightened, and cost per conversion at $9.37, with CPC improved 23 percent month over month.
