The Brief

The Bank of New Zealand’s ambition is to help all New Zealanders be good with money. For this brief, they wanted to reach a target of ‘Retail Affluent’ 25-49 year olds who are on the way up, technologically savvy and aspire to be smarter with their money. Regardless of whether they currently bank with BNZ or not, we wanted to tell them about the products and services we have that can help them be better with money. And to offer them a one-to-one MoneyReview to talk about ways they could improve on their personal financial situation.

Creative Execution

Using advanced emotion recognition technology, EmotionScan tracks and analyses your microexpressions through your webcam, as you’re faced with various money scenarios. Evocative sound effects, imagery and narration were carefully crafted to help you to visualise yourself in each scenario. Then, you’re presented with highly personalised results identifying the areas you may need to look at more closely. You can replay each scenario exploring the emotions you expressed second-by-second, and see a summary of the financial areas that made you most uncomfortable. If you feel like you want help, a one-to-one MoneyReview with the bank is just a click away.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

Most people struggle to be honest with themselves about money problems, let alone a bank manager. So we needed to help people understand what’s holding them back, without fear of being judged or given the hard-sell. So we created EmotionScan – a tool that lets people explore their own subconscious feelings about money in a private environment online. And then face up to the areas they personally need help with.

Results

Over 200,000 people took part in an EmotionScan experience – that's 6% of New Zealand adults. It got them thinking about the money problems they’d previously been unwilling to face. And as a result, New Zealanders are now 15% more confident that BNZ is the bank to help them be good with money.