How Aprio and Intuit Are Betting on the Future of Mid-Market Accounting

Intuit needed a video that would show the top accounting firms in the country what it looks like when a firm goes all in on a strategic partnership, and make them want to do the same. Aprio, a top-20 U.S. accounting firm, was the proof of concept. Gorilla Creative was brought in to find the story, shape the message, and bring it to the screen.

The Challenge‍

The creative problem here was more delicate than a typical testimonial. The video had to do several things at once, and they pulled against each other.

It needed to celebrate Aprio as a first mover without making other firms feel like they'd already missed their window. It needed to convey the depth and authenticity of the Aprio-Intuit partnership without sounding like a program pitch. It needed to inspire action without a hard sell. And it needed to speak directly to firm leaders who are skeptical of exactly the kind of video they were about to watch.

The wrong approach would produce something that felt like a vendor case study. The right approach would make viewers lean forward and think: that could be us.

Our Approach

Gorilla Creative led the project from the ground up. That included strategic framing, story development, discovery interviews with stakeholders from both Aprio and Intuit, creative development, a two-day video shoot, and full post production.

The strategic decision we made early was to frame the video not around the partnership program, but around Aprio's and Intuit's shared ambition to evolve. Aprio saw where the accounting industry was heading before most firms were paying attention, identified a gap in the mid-market that nobody was filling well, and decided to go first. That framing gave the video a point of view. It meant we didn't have to explain or sell the partnership. We just had to show what happened when one firm decided to stop sitting on the sidelines.

Three speakers, Patrick Ball and Jordan Fladell from Aprio and Simon Williams from Intuit, were interviewed separately and woven together in the edit to create a single, shared narrative voice across both companies. Each speaker carried a distinct part of the story: the market gap, the strategic decision, the partnership in practice, and the opportunity still ahead.

The video closes not with a product pitch but with an implicit challenge: Aprio got here by going first. The window is still open.

The Outcome

The result is a three-minute brand film built for a very specific audience, the top accounting firms in the country, with a very specific job: make them feel the cost of waiting. Two 30-second social cutdowns were delivered alongside the hero video for paid and organic distribution.

This project is a good example of what Gorilla Creative does when the challenge isn't just production. It's figuring out what to say, how to say it, and how to make it land with an audience that's seen every version of this kind of video before.