Pay Pig
Westpac
Issue 30 | March 2014
Agency
Lavender, Sydney
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director Marco Eychenne Creative Director Anna Karena Art Director Christof Ulbrich Coywriter Jordan Davies
Production Team
Lead Web Developer Donald Martinez Technical Solutions Architect Phuong Hoang
Other Credits
Planning Director Dom Hickey Business Director Tabitha Hammond Senior Account Manager Annie Chan Jess Barclay
Date
April 2013
Background
When it comes to kids, the banking market is a tough one to crack but worth the effort. If a bank can get a kid on board young, it increases its chances of having a customer for life. However, in the digital age, money-boxes and colouring books no longer cut it.
Idea
Most of Westpac's young audience shared a fixation on the iPhone. With this in mind, an app was created specially for them. Pay Pig.
Other banks had captured kids' savings but no-one had talked to kids about earning money. That was new.
The way Pay Pig worked was parents set chores they wanted their children to complete. They tapped in how much they were prepared to pay and a pay-day. Their kids were able to set targets of how much pocket-money they wanted to earn and the things they were saving for.
The app had features such as a pig- shaped SMS for prompting parents to pay their dues and a dual login feature for kids to engage with, and parents to monitor and control.
Results
- 310 downloads per day (and counting)
- Featured as Apple's App Of The Week
- Featured in Apple Stores across Australia on new iPhone 5s displays
- Earned a 5-star App Store rating
- Earned media value so far of over $846,425, with no campaign support
Our Thoughts
We have to accept that children these days are pretty commercial when it comes to chores and earning a few bob (or dollars in this case). And as they are also very digitally savvy, this nice app idea makes it all very business-like between parents and their (paid) little helpers. I remember being both shocked and impressed by my son, who, when quite young, had sold many of his Christmas presents on ebay by February, when he’d finished playing with them... He told me he was raising the money for something he really wanted!
This campaign is gently indirect. ‘Proudly supported by Westpac bank’ means no usual direct sell and piggy bank bribes. If that gives Westpac one point of difference to the other banks, all out to grasp every child’s savings, Pay Pig itself is another, teaching the value of money and earning.
It seems Walton’s Mountain is no more.