The Campaign

Banks believe money makes you happy and Millennials know a rich life makes you happy so we created THE UNSTOPPABLE SQUAD - a group of relatable young Aussies with the ambition to explore, discover and create their own futures. We gave them a Westpac account with $18,000 and captured their unguided and uncensored lives by asking them to answer a brief; show us what it means to live unstoppable in 2016. Armed with a video camera they began living unstoppable. We didn’t want a receipt; we wanted to see their dreams come alive. From different backgrounds, Stefan, a film director, Vanessa, a hip-hop teacher and Hannah, a business owner, all delivered. We buddied them up with our creative, content strategist and social planners and created rich stories across Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat & Tumblr that competed in a newsfeed dominated by friends travel adventures and the latest Kim and Kanye news.

Creative Execution

An explosive trailer launched the series teasing glimpses of what it means to live unstoppable. We invited young Aussies to visit the Westpac Tumblr to discover long form video stories and gifs of The Unstoppable Squad. Each story was crafted through a hero video piece, and complimented with video assets running across Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat to tell the story from a new angle and compel young Aussies to watch more. Instagram video allowed Stef’s story of travelling Ghana to reach a travel hungry young audience through captivating #travel #inspo clips, Snapchat gave behind the scenes, raw realism to his gritty adventures and we distributed the full length video story on Facebook around inspirational travel content and blogs reaching those travel fanatics. We launched new Unstoppable Squad stories every two weeks and optimized spend to the best performing formats, taking learning’s into content creation for each story.

The Unstoppable Squad’s shenanigans reached over 3.3m young Aussies. Over 1.7m young Aussies watched the squad in action and their stories were so relatable, inspiring and honest that there were over 1 million social engagements. The videos incredibly received between 14 – 18% engagement rates, FOUR TIMES Westpac usually sees. A quote on Vanessa’s video read, “Your such an inspirational soul ‘Ness!” Average view times were 65% while Snapchat received amazing 45% open rates. 59% of interactions on Tumblr were organic engagements generated through likes and reblogs (shares) of our goofy gifs and videos. The interaction was an astonishing 554% higher than the benchmark for financial brands on Tumblr. The social video content led to 26,500 clicks to the Westpac site to find out more about everyday banking products. The Unstoppable Squad captured the feeling of what it means to be a young today, “…Live life” wrote Siddharth Kothari.

Young people are busy working, partying; a million things are more interesting than hearing from a bank. No good story at a bar ever started with “I’m saving up for…” so we decided to capture a collective culture of young Aussies embracing the freedom their youth offers. Rather than an advertisement telling them about product benefits, we talked in their language through the most authentic means possible. THE STRATEGY; show them, them, living unstoppable. Show everyday Aussies living unstoppable and inspire others to have the confidence to follow their dreams. We weren’t just in and around content they were watching, we were the content they chose to watch. We ruthlessly crafted thumb-stopping moments and shared only inspiring stories that delivered the true meaning of living unstoppable. We met their browsing habits across social platforms and planned our approach around nocturnal viewing, snacking breaks and downtime on weekends.