The Brief

Westpac loves students, but they don’t love Westpac. Consideration amongst tertiary students is the worst across the whole bank; last year’s tertiary acquisition campaign only acquired 1,000 Tertiary Pac accounts. Given that tertiary students become far more valuable to the bank later in life, this had to change. But to make matters worse, Westpac had only a third of the budget their competitors would be spending during tertiary acquisition. This year the target was 3,000 accounts, so we had to be smart, outshine the competition on insight and execution, and make clever media decisions to grow reach without increasing spend.

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

Shaped by today’s ‘me generation’ attitudes, ask any student what they'll be worth in ten year’s time and you'll get the same answer – a fortune. Instead of chastising kids for thinking this way, we wholeheartedly embraced it. Join Westpac and be a Future Gazillionaire. On campus we gave students a taste of the highlife. They could bling themselves up, get their photo taken with a skimpy maid and muscly butler, and go in the draw to win an actual throne and a gazillion* dollars. (*It was actually $1000 but that feels like a gazillion when you’re a poor student.)

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

Our target (3,000 accounts) was triple the number of sign ups Westpac had achieved in the previous year. And we only had a third of the media spend other banks had to work with. So how’d we do? We smashed it. By campaign’s end, we opened 4,015 Student Pac accounts, which is 134% of our campaign target and a truly massive 400% increase on the previous year.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

Along with cut-through creative, we also employed clever media. Instead of adopting the ‘all around campus media’ approach other banks used, we focused our activations on key campuses and in critical areas. Photos taken were uploaded to Westpac’s Facebook page along with the students’ own social media accounts greatly amplifying our reach. And we also employed geo-targeted social media advertising for people we knew were on campus at the time. Combined with our creative insight, we spoke to students in their language, and at the times and places that made the most impact.