THE BIG-HEARTED BANK

TitleTHE BIG-HEARTED BANK
BrandAUSWIDE BANK
Product / ServiceFINANCIAL PRODUCTS & SERVICES
CategoryA05. Use of Original Composition for a Brand or Campaign
EntrantMcCANN BRISBANE Brisbane, AUSTRALIA
Idea Creation McCANN BRISBANE Brisbane, AUSTRALIA
Production McCANN BRISBANE Brisbane, AUSTRALIA
Production 2 PHOTOPLAY FILMS Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Production 3 EALLIN JAPAN Tokyo, JAPAN
Production 4 UNCANNY VALLEY Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Contributing AUSWIDE BANK Bundaberg, AUSTRALIA

Credits

Name Company Position
Benjamin Davis McCann Queensland Executive Creative Director
Phillippa Netolicky McCann Queensland General Manager
Armand de Saint-Salvy Photoplay Director
Ronald Roberts Photoplay Producer
Charlton Hill Uncanny Valley Executive Producer

The Campaign

People feel helpless and small when it comes to dealing with banks. So we developed a beautiful, heart-warming, brand campaign to shine light on the positive effect a bank with a big heart can have on a person. Named 'The Big-Hearted Bank', the campaign follows the transformation of a tiny, besieged accountant mouse. A mouse that lives inside our hearts and represents how we feel about our dealings with large dispassionate financial institutions. After our hero is rejected by a Big Bank for a loan on a car he has his heart set on, he discovers Auswide Bank, the 'big-hearted bank', and the tiny mouse is transformed! Now in our hero's heart lives a confident young lion.

Creative Execution

The TVC was developed over a period of 9 months. The original composition was developed after the visual component and was a highly collaborative process to achieve the style and emotive effect for the overall execution. Creatively we wanted the composition to be as simple, beautiful and sincere as possible, so instrumentation and vocalisations were intentionally kept as 'bare' as possible. It has appeared online (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram), on TV, and the composition will soon appear on radio as well.

Before it launched, Auswide Bank presented the campaign to staff across all branches with an overwhelming response. It brought staff to tears and reignited a brand culture that had been missing. Since launching, this response has been echoed by new and existing customers and has received an overwhelming response from the market and industry. The campaign recently launched in mid June 2016 with outstanding results currently being measured. The campaign has been rolled out across multiple channels including TV, Outdoor, Online Video via YouTube Pre-Rolls, SEM, Re-marketing and Social platforms. In the 3 weeks following launch, ads received 443,008 impressions, achieved 27,802 video views and 793 target clicks to the website, of which 488 were new visitors. There were 9 home/personal loan enquiries and 13 contact page/branch locator views.

This highly original composition is unlike anything that's been created for a bank. it's simplicity, naivety and honesty contribute immensely to the story and the ultimately campaign.

Our strategy was born from the idea : 'Discover the power of small'. A bank as small as Auswide, (and Auswide is a really, really small bank) needs to find something with which to differentiate itself. So we decided to use our perceived weakness (our smallness) as a strength. Big is rigid, uncaring, cunning and always pretending it has something in common with you. Small is real. Small is sincere. We found an opportunity to leverage off the general negative connotations Australians have with big banks and position ourselves as the small bank with a big heart. We did this in an entirely new way - an animated ad for a bank, with a heart-warming story about a man with a mouse that lives inside his chest!

Links

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