While volatility in the markets may be making life hard for some, Nasdaq is hoping to show how companies on its exchange help make life easier and more enjoyable. The 17 vignettes of its “Move Life Forward,” television ad campaign will be in rotation on CNBC, Fox News, Fox Business Channel, and CNN. (The campaign’s print component launched earlier in the year.) Here, we take a look at what Nasdaq wants to you to know—and what the real story is.

What Nasdaq Wants You to Know

The general message of the ads is that the diverse and powerful companies listed on Nasdaq improve lives, and Nasdaq itself is one of these companies. “We are the most innovative stock market that exists, and we are the home to those innovative companies,” says John Jacobs, Nasdaq’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer. The exchange invented electronic trading 36 years ago and was the first to use brand-building advertising, according to the company.

Since Nasdaq is best known as a home for tech companies, the ads nod to the sector by including eBay, Amazon, Research in Motion, and Adobe. But the TV spots also feature such widely recognized brick-and-mortar listees as Starbucks, Costco, and Bed Bath & Beyond. (View the ads here.)

Each 15-second commercial in the new campaign, created in collaboration with the Durham, North Carolina, ad agency McKinney, features a different listed company and illustrates how it improves the lives of primarily middle- to upper-middle-class people. In past campaigns, Nasdaq highlighted three to eight companies in each ad.

The commercials open with a short scene meant to illustrate a benefit that the company brings and end with a series of logos and taglines. Here’s the Starbucks ad:

A young office worker walks into a drab, empty break room. Rather then grab a cup of the office’s usual brew, he spies a full cup of Starbucks on the table and pours it into his own mug. Text pops onto the screen in a style reminiscent of a stock market ticker, showing Monday mornings up 3.61 percent.

“The campaign always uses the ticker up or down symbol to express an emotion or thought based on the scene,” says Liz Paradise, senior vice president and group creative director at McKinney.