Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds has business and marketing acumen. If he recently made headlines by proclaiming loud and clear his interest in buying the Ottawa Senators, it is his association with the Montreal fintech Nuvei that is talking about him this week.
Nuvei announced on Monday that Ryan Reynolds has become a shareholder in the payment technology provider. This is a two-pronged association. The 46-year-old actor invests a sum kept confidential to buy shares and becomes a marketing advisor and creator of video capsules for Nuvei.
Three 40-second capsules have been circulating since Monday on social networks Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, and a fourth will be added soon. These irreverent and rather amusing capsules show Ryan Reynolds and Nuvei CEO Philip Fayer reigniting each other on different topics. There is even a reference to poutine in one of the videos.
Ryan Reynolds imagined the scenarios for the capsules from scratch, explains Guillaume Conteville, head of marketing at Nuvei, in an interview.
He points out that the association with Ryan Reynolds is the result of a dialogue that has taken shape and evolved little by little over the past two years. “There was a first informal meeting and the relationship subsequently developed between Philip and Ryan. »
Guillaume Conteville claims that Ryan Reynolds is not compensated by Nuvei for his work as a “marketing advisor” and that he does not receive any money or shares from the company.
“He’s an investor,” he said. Its remuneration is to profit from the appreciation of the value of the company. He’s done that many times in the past,” he recalls.
Ryan Reynolds has actually been featured as an investor in several companies over the past few years. Think in particular of the robo-advisor Wealthsimple and the password manager 1Password, two other Canadian fintechs.
He also invested in Aviation Gin, sold at a high price to the giant Diageo in 2020. He also just went to the cash with the announcement last month of the sale of the low-cost wireless service provider Mint Mobile to T- Mobile for 1.4 billion US. His approximate 25% stake in Mint earns him more than US$300 million.
Ryan Reynolds also bought with a partner three years ago the Wrexham Association Football Club, a soccer club in the United Kingdom.
The video capsules on Nuvei are not the first made by Ryan Reynolds. He has also produced some before to shine the spotlight on other companies in which he is a shareholder, such as Wrexham and 1Password.
The objective of the video clips is to increase awareness of the Nuvei brand with potential business customers.
“Nuvei didn’t need to do much marketing in the past or promote itself because the company started in an industry where it was very strong, i.e. financial services and gaming” , says Guillaume Conteville.
“Nuvei has since started breaking into new verticals and battling companies like Irish Stripe and Dutch Adyen, both companies with big marketing budgets. We were looking for someone aligned with our values to help us tell our story, and Ryan Reynolds fits the bill. »
This is the second notable marketing effort in two months for Nuvei. In February, the company became a sponsor of the Mercedes Formula 1 team. The Nuvei logo now appears on the helmets and suits of pilots Lewis Hamilton and George Russell.
If a partnership between a company and a celebrity doesn’t automatically ensure success – quarterback Tom Brady became an ambassador for cryptocurrency exchange FTX during the pandemic and hockey player Nick Suzuki joined forces with Goodfood this winter – time will tell if the association with Ryan Reynolds will be successful for Nuvei and its shareholders. The title of Nuvei remained relatively stable Monday on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
