Create your own cool
Issue 15 | June 2010
Agency
BMF Sydney
Creative Team
Copywriter: Damon Porter; Art Director: Luke Hawkins
Production Team
Online Producer: Sora Nobari
Other Credits
Associate Creative Director: Brad Waggoner; Creative Director: Dylan Taylor; Account Director: Doni Savvides; Interactive Designer: Martyn Loftberg
Date
1st August 2009 – 30th September 2009
Background
Commonwealth Bank established Pi, a ‘savings club’ for their teen customers.
However, saving money doesn’t rate highly on teens’ priority list, nor does an interest in financial services. They’ve just figured out that socialising is fun and so is spending. To a teenager, the idea of saving money at the expense of their social life goes down like a lead balloon.
In many ways the task was Mission Impossible: get the disinterested teen segment of to engage with Commonwealth Bank while, at the same time, convincing them to deposit more money in their accounts. The target: 8120 unique website visits.
Idea
The solution was to tap into something that teens would be interested in: self-expression and creativity.
A highly engaging campaign was created, which gave teenagers the opportunity to design their own Dunlop Volley shoes (a cool Australian youth brand) in 3D. They could then view their designs using Augmented Reality technology and share them with their friends through social media to attract votes. The two designs with the most votes would actually get made into a pair of shoes.
To validate their entry, the target group also needed to make a $10 deposit into their account within the 8 week promotional period.
Results
This competition was only promoted to the target audience through the use of bank-statement inserts yet it still managed 19,235 unique visitors to the website, exceeding the target by 140%. Furthermore, there was an overall 47% return rate and the average time spent per visit was a satisfying 14 minutes – not bad for a bank.
Our Thoughts
Look, I know that incentives are fundamental to much direct marketing. You have to give people an offer of some sort to goad them out of total apathy into some sort of response. It’s just that nine out of ten incentives are just so unimaginative and uninspiring. Actually, it’s really depressing that it works. Fill in this questionnaire and have the chance of winning a weekend in a luxury hotel. Aaaarghhh.
An unimaginative marketer might have insisted that the offer here should have been a $50 savings bond or some sort of cash incentive. But Commonwealth Bank know that value is not to be found in money alone but in social currency.