Natwest

Summary

Identifying the right triggers to recruit teens to your brand is one of the most complex and challenging journeys a brand can undertake. A simple misunderstanding, or incorrect use of language, and you’ve immediately alienated yourself from your target market.

Rather than endeavour to artificially create a connection with our target consumer for NatWest, MediaCom recruited via this audience’s heartland media channel, MTV, to develop a credible  broadcast solution that delivered against our core objectives.

Building interactivity into the campaign - encouraging teens to design their own debit cards, and rate each others’ efforts - gave added engagement and drove impressive response rates.

Our Challenge:

The Natwest Adapt account is a current account exclusively for 11-18 year olds.

The Adapt debit card allows teens to design the look of their own card through uploading a library shot or using their own image.

Our business objectives were twofold:

1.  Achieve and hold the number one position in the market with an ambitious sales target, measured in terms of account openings.

2.  Increase card personalisation to drive income.(There was a direct return to NatWest,  in revenue, each time a new card design was uploaded).

The account was launched in 2007 with above the line support, with TV a notable absentee due to client concerns regarding the effectiveness of the medium at driving account sign-ups.

In 2008, we felt that with a year’s worth of experience under our belt, we could introduce an empathetic TV approach which would not only increase brand awareness, but if correctly positioned would compete with more traditional ‘response-orientated’ media when compared on a response rate basis.

All Teens are Tribal:

Our consumer research underpinned our theory that targeting teens is not just about demographics. They are motivated by defining their identity and each teen needs to feel like they belong to a “tribe”, whether it be the “Indie Kids” or the “Myspacers”. Further investigation highlighted that music was a key factor in individual expression.

Teens also think that banking is boring and dull and not for them. Furthermore they are inundated with incentives from youth brands vying for their loyalty on a daily basis. They are a very fickle and cynical audience. We needed to build a credible opinion of Natwest Adapt in order to resonate with this group.

Tribal Customs:

Insight from our research revealed that overt expressions of identity are key for teens.

This was brought to life by the communication platform, “Express Yourself”, which was designed to encompass the card personalisation element of the account, and drive brand affinity through recognising and enabling the individuality of teenagers.

Further research showed that TV remained a key solution in answering a teen’s need for self discovery, identity-building as well as entertainment.

With 63% of teens stating they could not live without a TV, and a high correlation between loving the medium and being heavy users, TV was the ideal platform to increase recognition and reward of our scheme.

But as our communication also needed to dispel common beliefs of banking as a traditionally dry subject, with uniformly poor customer service, a simple spot-based strategy would not suffice in this instance. We needed to align ourselves with a credible youth brand to demonstrate how the Adapt account could bring a unique element to banking, so MTV was the perfect channel selection for us.

•   A channel universally renowned as the “holy grail” of music

•   56 % of our audience were loyal viewers

•   A brand that was deemed “cool” by 60% of our teen audience. The right partner to build credibility for NatWest

Execution of the idea:

We developed a bespoke partnership with MTV. The campaign comprised of co-branded spots on-air and was supported by online activity.

The radio and TV presenter Jo Good fronted the campaign. Her involvement with MTV and as a recognised music industry expert ensured NatWest Adapt was aligned with youth brands and transferred core values not readily associated with banking – cool, individual and fun.

Co-branded TV and online ads drove teens to enter a “Money can’t Buy” online competition - a chance to win a VIP all expenses paid trip to London. A stay in a 5* star hotel, a shopping trip to Topshop, a make-over and photo shoot, and a session at a recording studio, all culminated in a meet and greet session with a celebrity.

As a communication platform, “Express Yourself” required interaction with others to make it really work, so the MTV creative also encouraged card personalisation through a revenue-sharing scheme for top card designs. This was the “NatWest Top 10 Card Offer” – get your design in the Top Ten (as voted for by your peers) and for every download of your design you make £1. This enabled teens to share their card designs and provided an incentive to be rewarded through ratings, praise or financially.

Further brand alignment and integration was achieved through usage of the MTV iconic “characters” for the Adapt image library, as well as bespoke MTV branded card designs created exclusively for our card holders. The partnership was genuinely two-way, in that MTV branding appeared all over the Adapt section of the NatWest website, giving them exposure to thousands of Teens. This was the first time a brand such a MTV had been integrated onto the bank’s website.

Results:

Introducing TV to our media mix was an unprecedented success, in creating the opportunity for teens to interact with the Adapt account and express themselves, and in promoting peer-to-peer sharing.

Brand alignment, via MTV and Jo Good gave the campaign real credibility and was effective in driving traffic to the Natwest Adapt site with 34,522 MTV referrals. 4,000 card designs were downloaded and we generated over 3,000 competition entries during the 6 week campaign!

The campaign was also effective in hitting our pre-set account opening targets, setting us on course to achieve our annual target.

The analysis of response rates revealed that the MTV partnership returned a response rate of 0.4%. Placed in context against the response rate of the online activity, 0.2%, this represents a compelling validation of our strategic use of the MTV partnership to engage this elusive teen market.

Client Quote

“At NatWest we had developed a terrific proposition for our youth customers, but we also understood that the way in which we promoted it was absolutely crucial: for a bank, there’s a real tension between effectively engaging this audience and losing credibility by trying too hard.

The partnerships with MTV and Jo Good gave us permission to promote the Adapt Account and the card personalisation feature in a way that was relevant, fresh and most of all credible. Given the interactive element of the proposition, simply creating awareness and driving site visits wasn’t going to be enough, so integrating the partnership into the proposition (by offering MTV-branded designs) was crucial, and effective.  It played no small part in inspiring people to design, upload and share over 4,000 designs of their own”.

Richard Taylor - Brand Director