Australian mega-bank nab has been widely praised for a marketing campaign it launched on Valentines Day.
The campaign is interesting and to understand the significance you need to read up on the situation that allows Australia’s four largest banks to operate in this market as a virtual “oligopoly on steroids”
The campaign was labelled The Break Up
Down here in Australia, a number of business commentators have talked up the brilliance of this campaign – labelling it a social media success story.
But is it?
I think labelling this “campaign” a social media success story is wrong for a number of reasons.
1. It’s not original
Queenslanders Credit Union ran a campaign in November 2010 at the height of consumer backlash over the behaviour of the banking oligopoly who increased interest rates over and above the official RBA increase.
Go and check out their Facebook page – go back through the history to November and you’ll note the similarities.
The Queenslanders campaign was actually pretty smart, not least because it was a pure social media campaign – Facebook, blog, YouTube, and Twitter – quick to market, engaged with consumers around an important issue, and encouraged action by the consumer.
2. It’s all about the bank and their brand.
Me Me Me – the consumer message is lost in their gloating over what they’ve done. How much bank brand content did you have to consume before you got to the core message?
What’s amusing is that when you scroll down the homepage of the micro site the whole exercise starts to look like a glorified case study for the marketing agency.
Brands can successfully integrate themselves into the social space – have a look at what Avery Dennison is doing on Facebook – an example of engagement with a very clear segment of their customer base.
3. There is no engagement in the comments
One of the central tenements of social media is engagement – of understanding consumer issues and being able to engage in dialogue. When I look at the comments on the posts they’ve published I don’t see a lot of engagement or genuineness – it feels very controlled – rote.
4. It’s not obvious why their changes are relevant.
Why should I care? Nothing about this marketing stunt communicated why I should care. Really successful campaigns like Ford’s Fiesta Movement – as described by US social media expert Jason Falls clearly articulate purpose and tell me why I should care.
Ford created a new way of communicating with its customers and showed the world how to do social media on scale
In summary, this looks like a marketing stunt – like a typical multi-channel marketing stunt that just happened to use some social media channels to distribute the message.
Russell Allert
March 17, 2011
As someone who works for Queenslanders Credit Union (but had nothing to do with their campaign back in November) I would like to say thanks for the mention, but also state how much I agree with this article. I think this is a win for the marketing agency, not for NAB. Not yet, anyway.
How can you judge this a success already? You need to see the cold hard numbers, and that won’t come through for a while yet. Until then you cannot judge a media campaign as any sort of success.
The NAB has done well out of this campaign in the awareness stakes in the short term – it got people talking about them – but as for using this as a more long term strategy to gain awareness of their brand, I am not too sure. It will all depend on whether people believe their core message that they are now somehow different to the other banks. I would think that people are a lot smarter than banks or marketers give them credit for.
Russ
Mark Parker
March 17, 2011
Russ,
Thanks for stopping by. The Dynamic Business article did reference some stats from the bank about account growth immediately following the campaign. I guess they’ll argue the marketing campaign was a success. I’m not a banker, let alone a corporate banker so I couldn’t comment on the value the campaign delivered. As you noted, the question is whether people believe their core message – that being the message after the brand promotion…
Stuart Clements
March 17, 2011
Couldn’t agree more Mark. Once it was OK to be a banker, it hasn’t been for a while! And I was one for a fair number of my 20+ working years. The issue with banks and brands is that none, and I mean none, of their brand message is representative of their organisational strategy, nor is it integrated into their business model. Big organisations run on KPIs, which are allocated on a siloed basis, one of which who pays the marketers to come up with the next best thing. If they were truly keen to be different, why not consider how their distribution models could serve their customer segments better and then reach out!
Mark Parker
March 17, 2011
Hi Stuart,
Whilst I believe what you say, I am surprised at the idea that brand messages don’t align to strategy or business models. The point you raise about developing a deep understanding of customer segments is so critical – that was why I referred to the Avery Dennison example – a clear example of an organisation that seeks to talk “with” customers rather than “to” customers.
Clearly, when I see examples like nab I see opportunity for community focused institutions like credit unions and building societies to do more with less – and yet be relevant in ways that the oligopoly will never comprehend…
cheers Mark