Why is this work relevant for Media?

"FooortePay: the longest bank advertisement in the world" is a 9-hour-long commercial run by the Bank; it got over 1 000 000 views. Despite the gargantuan length, most of the viewers saw it out, lured by some monetary rewards that were “hidden” throughout the video. In fact we managed to have the audience watching the ad for 9 hours on end.

Background

Among a variety of products, ForteBank offers FortePay, an easy-to-use tool enabling customers to transfer money to a holder of a particular telephone number. To transfer money, one doesn’t need to know the recipient’s bank card details, nor does one have to be a customer of the Bank. All is needed is to download the ForteBank app. However, for the first three months the amount of transfers through the app was not steady, with the figure growing by 5.9% in the second month and shrinking by 25.5% in the third month. The Agency was expected to draw attention to the new money transfer system through virus communication to reach out to at least 1 000 000 million, relying on a budget of Euro 10 000; the aim was to highlight how easy the app is to use, encouraging more money transfers through FortePay.

Describe the creative idea/insights (30% of vote)

In Kazakhstan not all the population relies on bank cards: 37% of Kazakhstanis withdraw the whole amount once they get paid. Many people still carry money to other cities in cash, despite the fact that carrying cash is far from being safe or convenient. We came up with a simple idea to shoot a boring and protracted ad to highlight how weird it is to rely on cash in the 21st century, given that money could be easily transferred if one knows at least the recipient’s phone number, with the transfers made even easier with FortePay in place.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

The target audience for the ad consisted of people who are not yet in a habit to transfer money online. The strategy was to shoot a stimulus ad that would show how boring it is to carry money in cash so that the audience could be discouraged from doing that; the ad was to be uploaded on YouTube to be further picked up by the media and entertainment platforms popular across Kazakhstan. Watching the 9-hour-long ad to the end enabled to feel the unreasonableness of carrying money in cash. We felt nobody was going to watch such a long ad, therefore we “hid” a sizeable amount of money in the ad, the “key” to the money could only be obtained through seeing it out. The message to be conveyed was that the ad is protracted and unreasonable in the same way as any attempt to carry money in cash is.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

1. We took cameras and plenty of batteries along, got in some cars and set off on a ride from one major city to another. These were Almaty and Shymkent cities respectively. The two cities are 700 kilometers away from eachother. 2. In the editing process we «hid» numbers throughout the ad, with the numbers eventually making up a phone number to be used to claim the hidden «treasure». 3. When uploading the ad, ForteBank informed the prospect viewers that 1 000 000 tenge was «hidden» in the video, which was equivalent to Euro 2 300 (the average salary in 2019 stands at Euro 400). The first viewer to locate all the hidden numbers and send an sms to the resulting phone number was to get the designated «treasure». 4. Then we shared the video with Kazakhstan-based media, popular public pages on social networks and particular bloggers.

List the results (30% of vote)

The video got 1 000 000 views. Project reach: 5 000 000. 30 media outlets covered the ad, with the brand explicitly mentioned in the materials. Notably, 2 TV channels included the story into their nightly news. All of this at no cost for the Agency. The number of money transfers through the ForteBank app via FortePay facility grew by 20% month-on-month. The number of new users: +40 000, The amount of transfers boosted up to 22 332 956 $