MERCURY

Client

Mercury

Year

2026

Tags

  • Content & Campaign
  • Technology
  • Media & Entertainment

The Context

A founder’s ambition may start a business, but with growth comes complexity. More people. More spending. More approvals. Before long, the flow of money can become the thing slowing a business down, making the founder the very bottleneck scaling is supposed to solve.


Mercury approached MATTE to turn this challenge into a new way of thinking: what if money were treated like any other essential material for building a business? Like clay. Like fabric. Like data. Together, we shaped a 360 campaign around the idea that when money is given shape, context and intelligence, it can flow where it’s needed, when it’s needed, so the work never has to wait.

The Approach

Guided by the central thesis, “Money is your material,” we built a 360 campaign that makes the idea tangible for founders navigating growth. The anthemic film, Give It Shape, uses water as a metaphor for money, moving from a flow that spills, stalls and loses direction to a current that moves fluidly with the business.
Concurrently, a series of Mercury Spend films turns the brand thesis into product proof, introducing Mercury’s new AI-powered spend management system and showing “money shaped to move” in practice.


Beyond film, the idea extends across OOH, stills and a flexible design toolkit, with a verbal language designed to make the messaging human, immediate and intuitive to adopt.

The Outcome

The campaign gives Mercury a distinctive way to express what intelligent banking makes possible, from anthemic brand storytelling to tangible product proof. Across live sports, streaming, cinema, in-flight entertainment and OOH, “Money is your material” carries that point of view to a wider business audience.

BUILT THROUGH CRAFT

Working with director Rune Milton and the production team at SMUGGLER, with post and VFX by Chemistry Film and music and sound design by Citizen Music, the films paired a deeply human, cinematic approach with moments of surrealism that amplified the very real pressures of building a business.

The characters and worlds were carefully researched and built around distinct companies and the people behind them, turning mounting approvals, bottlenecks and operational complexity into something founders could see, feel and recognize as their own.

From the texture of 35mm and the scale of real landscapes to the rhythm of the edit, voiceover, sound and score, we ensure every element of the films is treated as material to be shaped.

  • Matte Partner

    Matthew Rowean

  • Senior Client Director

    Josh Kitts

  • Senior Project Manager

    Sharon Lam

  • Head of Strategy

    Ann Kim

  • Senior Strategist

    Antonio Serros

  • Creative Director

    Tanner Tananbaum

  • Visual Director

    Pat Dierker

  • Design Director

    Edward Shaughnessy

  • Designer

    Sophia Almendral

  • Designer

    Gabriel Braga

  • SVP Production

    Thad Somoza

  • Senior Content Producer

    Evelyn Ng

  • Agency Post Production

    MATTE Finish

  • Senior Post Director

    Michael Czeizinger

  • Additional Editor

    Owen Walker

  • VFX and MGFX Artist

    Stoker Kou

  • Editing Services

    Little Chemist

  • Editor

    Peter Brandt

  • Assistant Editor

    Nikolaj Dahl

  • Offline Producer

    Louise Ryge

  • Production Services

    Smuggler

  • Director

    Rune Milton

  • Line Producer

    Natalie Jacobson

  • Director of Photography

    Oliver Millar

  • Production Designer

    Alexandra Bird

  • Wardrobe

    Alex Price

  • Hair and Makeup

    Makaira Dullabh

  • Local Production

    Sparky Films

  • Local Managing Director

    Marchant Bellingan

  • Local Producer

    Diwan de Beer

  • Local Production Manager

    Adali van Dalen

  • Drone Company

    Skyhook

  • Drone Pilot

    Ri-El De Jager

  • Drone Operator

    Jadon Churchman

  • Additional Drone

    Joshua Turner

  • Online Post-Production Services

    Chemistry Film

  • Senior VFX Supervisor

    Mikael Balle

  • Head of Production

    Camilla Nilsson

  • Executive Producer

    Lauren Loftus

  • VFX Producer

    Emilie Lausch

  • Senior Compositors

    Mario Maruska

    Thomas Banner

  • 3D artist

    David Lessel

    Guillermo Lazaro

  • Conform artist

    Søren Knudsen

  • Colorist

    Mikael Balle

  • Music & Sound Design

    Citizen Music

  • Ways & Means

    Media Strategy & Buying