TD Bank recently transformed select ATMs into "Automated Thanking Machines" to make life a little better for a handful of lucky customers.
The ATMs "spoke" to customers at TD branches when they tried to take out cash, and addressed them by name before giving them gifts as a "thank you" for their business. Those gifts ranged from $50 for a young boy to plane tickets to Trinidad. TD captured it all on hidden camera and posted the video to YouTube with the hashtag #TDThanksYou.
In the video, the ATM "speaks" with a live voice and addresses each unsuspecting customer by name. It then issues them personalized thank-you gifts through the ATM's slots, and from two hidden panels in the sides of the ATM box.
"I'm ATM. You know what that stands for?" the ATM asks one man.
"Automated Teller Machine?" the man answers.
"That is correct – normally. But today you're wrong. I'm an Automated Thanking Machine," it says.
For TD Bank customer Dorothy, the ATM thanked her with plane tickets to visit her cancer-stricken daughter in Trinidad. "She's my only daughter," Dorothy says. "She had an operation on Tuesday."
Dorothy then reads out a card she receives from the ATM. "We have come to know how giving, loving and supportive you are, especially to your daughter in Trinidad," the card says. "She's a lucky woman to be able to call you Mom."
Mother-of-two Christine gets a double surprise. First, the ATM gives her two $1,000 RESPs for her kids. "Here's the thing. If you tell your kids, 'Hey, here's an RESP,' they'll be all, 'Meh,'" the machine says. "But if you tell them you're taking them to a place like Disney…" The ATM slot then slides open and gives her the tickets.
"I've never been able to take my kids anywhere!" Christine says as she hugs a bank employee.
But it wasn't just mothers who received the unexpected gifts. The video shows everyone from small children to the elderly receiving personalized gifts from the talking ATM. One older woman is particularly delighted to get a vase filled with flowers. "I've never in all my life had such a beautiful surprise," she says.
A man named Michael, dressed as a labourer, arrives at the ATM to take out money, only to receive a new set of threads and a visit from one of his heroes. Michael gets a baseball glove, a Toronto Blue Jays hat and a customized jersey from the ATM. But it doesn't stop there, because Jays superstar Jose Bautista is there to give him his last gift: an opportunity to throw out the first pitch at a Toronto baseball game.
The video concludes with a montage of others who received gifts in the campaign.
"A thank you can change someone's day," reads the video description.
