The Australian Effie Awards
General Entry Form 2016
Entry Number:
326
Agency
DDB Sydney
Advertiser Westpac
Entry Title Culture eats category for breakfast
Category for this Entry F. New product or service
Nick Andrews & Mark Razzell
Author
Phone
Email
0420319344
[email protected]
Directions appearing with each question must not to be deleted from the completed case; they serve as a guide for both
entrants and judges. Complete entry form in - Type face: black font; 10pt minimum. All data must include a specific,
verifiable source. Refer to the Effie “How to Enter” booklet for guidelines on properly sourcing your data. Data without a
source will result in entry disqualification. Answer every question or indicate “not applicable” and define your target
audience in the entry. Any unanswered question will result in entry disqualification.
Executive Summary (Please Attach the Executive Summary to the front of the entry so the
judges can read this first)
An Executive Summary of no more than 100 words is also required (not included in page count).
‘I’d rather go to the Dentist that talk to a bank’ – Youths’ damning view of the category prompted Westpac to
change. They embraced a culturally redefining campaign that co-opted their fancy new ‘Get Cash’ technology…
created spoof marketing…to play with a national ATM network…to hand out cash...for free…to pretty much anyone
who wanted some……not very bank like!
Changing the bank’s cultural norms enabled a bold and experimental approach which delivered an extraordinary
ROI and outshone the performance of category giant CBA. More importantly redefining the way Westpac operates
spawned a new emergency capability to help customers in need.
The Australian Effie Awards
General Entry Form 2016
1. Total Campaign Expenditure
What was your total expenditure including development, media, production, agency fees and any other
costs? Including production and value of donated media and non-traditional paid media.
Total campaign spend - $6m
2. What was the strategic communications challenge?
CBA is the goliath of the youth banking market in Australia with a whopping 41% market share (Source:
MFI, Roy Morgan, 14-24yrs, Jan 2016) They get people signed up when they are young through their long
established schools ‘Dollarmites’ program and hang on for dear life leveraging a huge marketing spend and
distribution network as youths move through school, uni and into their first jobs.
And it is worth it! Youths - 18-24 year olds in particular - Categorised partly as Gen Zs and partly Millennials
based on the year of birth (we’ll just call them Millennials in this paper to keep things simple) – are
surprisingly important to a bank’s long term fate. Whilst they are tough to acquire and broke most of the
time, as they build their careers and their wealth through different life stages into credit cards, home loans
etc., the returns grow.
CBA’s 41% share of the market gives them first crack at the gigantic potential it holds, an extraordinary
position that sets them up for success for generations to come.
nd
Westpac, Australia’s 2 biggest bank, does not have those assets and has historically attracted an older
and more premium customer base. They have 11% share of the youth market (Source: MFI, Roy Morgan,
14-24yrs, Jan 2015) making them just ¼ the size of CBA in this critical segment.
In the enduring battle between the biggest 2 banks in the country, CBA’s not so hidden advantage literally
puts them ahead from the start. And so in July 2015 Westpac took the decision to aggressively take on the
millennial market prioritising the 18-24 segment in a bid to strengthen their long term trajectory. The
launch of the new Get Cash Mobile technology was seen as lever to drive the change.
But we didn’t have an advantage with this news in itself. In July 2014 Westpac and CBA simultaneously
launched the same thing - a new mobile banking technology that allows you to use your smart phone to
withdraw money from an ATM. It’s a big step forward for the banks but in terms of driving acquisition they
effectively cancelled each other out. Our first campaign for Get Cash ran in July 2014 and had no affect on
this market.
Mission difficult
Our lowly penetration figures are matched by a comparatively weak brand consideration score for this
segment:
CBA Brand consideration: 72% (Source Millward Brown Jul 2015)
CBA market share: 41%
Westpac Brand consideration: 35% (Source Millward Brown Jul 2015)
Westpac market share: 11%
3. What were your objectives? State specific goals.
Your entry is expected to include compelling data including behavioural objectives and results. Only in rare
instances are the judges likely to award an entry that only demonstrates attitudinal changes. Provide a % or # for
all goals. If you do not have a specific type of objective (e.g. no quantifiable objectives), state this in the entry
form and explain why and why the objectives you do have are significant and challenging in the context of your
category, etc. You must provide benchmark and context for your goals versus year prior and in context of
competitive landscape and category.
Our objective: Use our new Get Cash technology as a proof point to acquire ‘new to bank’ transactional
account customers from the Millennials segment
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General Entry Form 2016
4. What was your strategy – and how did you get there?
What was your strategy? Was it driven by a consumer insight or channel insight or marketplace / brand opportunity?
Explain how it originated and how the strategy addressed the challenge.
Its not an advertising problem
Deciding you want to win in a segment is one thing, acquiring the customers, and more importantly being able to
provide the customer experience they were looking for, is something else entirely. Our view that new product
news – impressive as it is, would not be enough in itself to turn heads.
Westpac is a huge business. Proud to be turning 200 years old with millions of customers, a deep connection with
the economy of Australia, and famous for their support of the Life Saving Chopper Service amongst other things.
But as just 11% of customers are 18-24s no one would say they are ‘the bank for young people’; they are just not
wired into this segment; it is not their natural hunting ground,
However the truth is that none of the banks really have the hearts and minds of this group. CBA might have them
physically but research from Life Lounge brought the problem starkly home: “I’d rather go to the dentist than
listen to a bank” screams the headline in their November 2014 Sweeny report of Australian Millennials, which
reveals the damning statistic that 1/3 of them believe there will be no need for banks in the future and ½ of them
believing their own bank offers no difference to another (Source Life Lounge 2015).
Banks represent an old world that youths are not buying into…they might need banking, but they don’t need a
bank… and increasingly look to disruptors like Facebook, Paypal, Apple and the like to provide the payments
services that were traditionally sacred to the banks.
Leaning into the problem
So to win in the category we really needed to ignore the conventions of it because things need to change. What’s
more CBA, the natural enemy in the story, are on notice too despite their healthy balance sheet. So we looked
further afield to the business and companies that do appeal to youngsters like Google or Uber; you can’t help but
notice that their success stems from a fresh and different culture that then leads to disruptive and compelling
products and services. They are more nimble, more agile, less conservative…and critically more creative and
exploratory than old school businesses.
Peter Druker said ‘Culture beats strategy for breakfast’... but forget strategy… these days culture is devouring
whole categories at a furious rate! We realised that to change the profile of the customer base we would need to
change the profile and behaviour of our 200 year old bank; namely its culture and operate in the way young
people want to live these days.
The change we wanted to see
From a company dominated by rules and regulation to a company prepared to loosen up
From a business that does similar things over again to a business prepared to experiment
From a paternalistic ruler to a playful and engaging ‘creator’ archetype
And so to drive a bus through this cultural incompatibility we challenged Westpac with a campaign idea using
their new service that broke some of the most sacrosanct and eye wateringly important rules of banking. We coopted this fancy new technology…and created spoof marketing…to play with a national ATM network…to hand
out cash...for free…to pretty much anyone (within the target market) who wanted some……not very bank like!
And credit where its due…they breathed deeply and went with it. They bought into a campaign that required a
huge cultural change for the business and the approval at the executive level due to compliance and reputational
risk. In a memorable meeting with the executive in charge of the ATM network who reviewed the idea and the
attendant report from his department advising not to proceed with the campaign due to that risk, his feedback
was: “well we are not getting anywhere by doing nothing, so lets try something new, it will be fun”.
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General Entry Form 2016
5. What was your big idea?
What was the idea that drove your effort?
The idea should not be your execution or tagline. State in 25 WORDS OR LESS.
“WTF Westpac! The account codes in your marketing videos are real!” A deliberate mistake spotted by and
engaged with by Millennials across the country.
6. How did you bring the idea to life?
Describe and provide rationale for your communications strategy that brings the idea to life. Explain how your idea
addresses your challenge. Describe the channels selected/why selected? How did your creative and media strategies
work together?
In not more than three A4 pages show sufficient creative examples to enable the judges to understand the campaign.
These pages can be additional to the eight A4 page written entry.
Our idea was simple. Turn the usually boring marketing materials from a bank that explained how to use the new
Get Cash service into a secret treasure hunt for our target audience. We replaced the dummy code and card
numbers that feature in our materials with real ones, and didn’t say a word.
An idea that broke the cultural norms of the bank
‘Get cash’ is a function where you can use your mobile phone to generate a code (via the mobile banking system)
to release money from your account at any ATM, so you just walk up to the machine without a card and with the
right code the money comes out.
But playing with the new system as we had proposed is a challenging thing to do for a bank. It is carefully
designed to ensure that the money in a named account only goes to a specified person – for all the obvious
reasons. We had proposed that the bank put significant money ($40,000) in dummy accounts to send out to
unknown people across the country. This is hugely counter intuitive to them and fights the rules, regulations and
protocols that underpin procedures which keep us all secure. Added to that:
 The same codes could be simultaneously punched into different ATMs by people responding to the
films, triggering a security alert - a potential risk.
 If you punch in the numbers wrongly 3 times in a row the ATM locks itself down for 20 minutes as part of
its security protocols – a potential risk.
 The bank has 40,000 staff which creates confidentiality challenges so any prior knowledge of this activity
(which would go on for 2 weeks) creates the opportunity for theft - a potential risk.
In a heavily regulated category where compliance is an essential part of the business where mistakes can’t be
made changes like these are hard to implement.
We set up a secure ‘war room’ for the campaign where our social team could dynamically replace the one time
codes displayed in the videos as they were used in real life, so the film stayed the same, but the numbers didn’t.
The campaign started in Facebook’s new feed and it didn’t take long for someone to give it a go. And the word
spread.
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General Entry Form 2016
Over the following two weeks we stoked the fire by launching 7 more videos. As now the codes had been
discovered we brought in more comedy to the films and started acknowledging the joke as we spread across
more channels such as Instagram and Snap Chat
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Over 2 weeks we gave away $40,000 across 7 states through individually activated secret ‘codes’.
The socially led campaign was followed by an aggressive retargeting campaign delivering more reasons to join
Westpac to our target market, and an outdoor buy with the same messages was used to build a louder presence
for Westpac whilst we were engaging our audience.
7. How do you know your campaign was successful?
Detail why you consider your effort a success. Refer to your objectives (results must relate directly to your objectives
in (3) – restate them and provide results) and demonstrate how you met or exceeded those objectives using quantitative
and behavioural metrics. Did your effort drive in-market results? Did it drive awareness and consumer behaviour change?
Use charts and data whenever possible. Explain what x% means in your category. For confidential information proof of
performance may be indexed if desired. Demonstrate the correlation between activity and outcomes.
Make sure you address every objective, whether fully achieved or not. Indicate why the results you have are significant in
the context of your category, competition and product / service.
Brand tracking
Brand tracking recorded a 14% uplift in consideration among the 18-24s during the 2 month campaign period for
a Westpac Transaction Account (source: Millward Brown).
Customer acquisition
the total uplift attributable to this campaign is 40%YoY.
This performance smashed our original target for new accounts by 70%!
Business growth
Our campaign outperformed the category and CBA, and we built market share validating our culture over
category strategy (all data below from Roy Morgan).
Category growth: 1%
CBA growth: -2%
Westpac growth: 10.3%
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Source: Roy Morgan
8. Did it achieve a positive ROI?
You need to convince the judges that the marketing investment provided a positive financial return – if that was a
requirement. Indexing of data is acceptable. Your entry will not be ineligible if you don’t provide any data, but entries
that do provide convincing evidence will gain additional marks. (Note that this data can be excluded from the published
case on request.) We recognise that, in some instances, a measurable financial return will not be an objective, but
you will need to persuade the judges why not.
ROI measures by what percentage the incremental gross profit (not gross sales) generated exceeded the
campaign costs/investment.
‘Incremental’ means comparing what happened, with what would be expected to happen had the campaign not
taken place and/or that status quo maintained.
So, if the incremental gross profit is $1,000 and campaign costs are $1,000, they cancel each other out and the
ROI is 0%. If additional gross profit was $1,500 the ROI is 50%.
(refer to the supplementary notes on ROI calculation)
Banking is about long-term engagement with customers and cross selling products. The most important product
is the transaction account, as it becomes the hub for a ‘Mybank customer’. A MyBank customer uses their
transaction account as the centralised account for salary in and payments out, servicing multiple additional (and
higher margin) products holdings – Home Loans, credit cards etc. These customers are very profitable and very
sticky.
Three scenarios to assess the ROI of this campaign
Scenario 1 – We only keep the customers we’ve gained for three years
ROI = -90% - A loss for the bank
Scenario 2 – We maintain customers for 25 years, but only with their transactional account i.e. no cross selling is
achieved
ROI = 222%
Scenario 3 – We maintain customers for 25 years, who become ‘My Bank’ customers
ROI = 3,632%
An unforseen benefit
The campaign has ended but the new technology, protocols and accounts the bank established to make it happen
remain, and they have found a new lease of life as an emergency service for the bank. The inconvenient truth is
The Australian Effie Awards
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that the online banking network does go down on occasion leaving customers stranded. When this happened in
March 2016 over a weekend when branches were closed the call centres started getting calls from desperate
customers needing food and supplies for their families, and who had no access to their own money. A terrible
experience for a customer and one which needs to be resolved instantly. Faced with this situation Westpac staff
had the idea to reactive the accounts and methodology of our campaign, enabling the bank to remotely and
immediately distribute emergency funds to customers in need. This quick thinking saved the day, and has now
been formalised into an emergency action plan for the staff in future occurrences.
9. Convince us that the result was not due to other factors.
You must explain in your entry the effect of any other potentially relevant factors such as product changes, pricing
changes, distribution changes, competitive activity, press coverage, economic conditions, weather etc. You should
acknowledge and estimate the role played by other factors and you should advise if the communications program led to
other benefits accruing (such as retailers taking on more SKU’s, improving space allocated and access to promotional
activity, or even improved support from a sales force that has ‘increased belief’ in the brand). Advertising rarely works in
isolation but the judges need to be convinced that your campaign had a major impact on results.
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This product had been advertising before, but never through the lens of a campaign specifically targeting
youth. It was a new initiative for Westpac and therefore new money applied to this problem, but money
well spent that offers a strong ROI.
There was not an unusual market event or spike at that time of year.
There was no growth in distribution – branches.
There was no other marketing activity focused on this target market during this period.
There was no other financial offer running at the same period to encourage people in this age group to
join Westpac.
Competitor brands continued activity as usual.
The Get Cash technology for withdrawing cash from ATMs via phone is a relatively new feature which we
were promoting through this campaign (launched in 2014), but otherwise a transaction account remains
unchanged.
The category grew during this period but at 1% vs our 10% gain, and as CBA declined YoY it is clear that
our gains were earned rather than organic.
10. Do you think there are any lessons to be learned from this case about
advertising effectiveness or measurement?
Judges will give additional marks to exceptional ideas, exceptional results and to cases that teach us something about
how advertising works. A big idea is worth more than a lesser idea. A case that adds to our knowledge about advertising
effectiveness or measurement deserves additional marks. These marks are open to the discretion of the judges. This is
the “I wish I’d been responsible for that” factor. We Ask judges to reward great ideas, great results, originality,
innovative measurement techniques, and penalise poorly written cases. High scores here will be the cases we want
marketing students to be inspired by; the cases we can learn something from; the cases we want to showcase to the
world.
Youth culture is always challenging for big corporates, it is supposed to be that way. And to tackle it our idea
played to the unchanging need of the younger generation – Reward me.
The story is an old one - There’s a secret reward out there - a few find out about it first - they spread the word more and more are invited to join in. It’s a tried and trusted technique. But what has changed dramatically is how
you go about it.
Its obvious that you need to get into their world, but the risk is that that stops with the media channels, whereas
this paper shows that actually its culture calling the shots. It was hard to do, and our client took the brave step of
using their ultra secure banking system to ‘play’ with and tease the target market they had to rewrite the
protocols and rules to do it, and it involved a huge amount of behind the scenes work between product, legal and
security and marketing - its just not the done thing. But they got it done anyway, and experimentation has paid
off financially.
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General Entry Form 2016
Perhaps more importantly though, this experimentation within the bank’s culture has made real change happen,
and not just in our ability to attract younger customers. We now have a new capability for the bank to help
people in need. A process that didn’t exist before this campaign, and that wasn’t being planned for or developed
on its own right. It is something that we didn’t foresee, but guess what - change culture and you find the rest
follows.
AGENCY AND ADVERTISER AUTHORISATION
SIGNATURE FOR ENTRY BY COMPANY OFFICERS
We certify on behalf of:
____________________ (Agency CEO) and _________________
(Client Company CEO or equivalent)
that the information submitted for the attached campaign is a true and accurate portrayal of the objectives
and results of that campaign.
We also certify that the campaign has not been found in breach of any advertising or marketing codes or
in breach of any law within the Australian jurisdiction.
We acknowledge that the case study of this campaign may be published by The Communications Council
or with the authorisation of The Communications Council, but that we will have the opportunity to remove
such information from that case study that we regard as market sensitive or confidential.
_________________________________
Signature of Officer of Agency
__________________________________
Signature of Officer of Client Company
Title:
Company:
Date:
Title:
Company:
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