During the Cricket World Cup, ANZ used its Dream Big initiative to get cut-through the marketing noise during the Cricket World Cup. Rather than focusing exclusively on the event, the bank brought its Black Caps sponsorship to life by travelling around the country showing its support for grassroots cricket by upgrading the facilities at various grounds around the country. Each of these refurbishments were recorded, providing shareable content that quickly spread around country and led to a combined total of over two million likes, shares and comments for the brand.
And now, with the Rugby World Cup fast approaching, ANZ is at it again, this time renovating Waitemata Rugby Club in a new video posted to Facebook.
Do more than just dream: it’s time to #DreamBigNZ. If you’ve got big aspirations for your local rugby team or club, we want to help you achieve them. Just tell us your rugby dreams today and we could make it happen.Apply at anz.co.nz/dreambig
Posted by ANZ New Zealand on Saturday, 29 August 2015
The difference in this instance is that ANZ isn’t even a sponsor of Rugby New Zealand, the All Blacks or the Rugby World Cup. The bank is simply using the success of the existing platform to associate its brand with rugby at a time when the sport is dominating public interest.
In the past, the Dream Big initiative was limited to cricket, with the call for entries on the website saying: “ANZ wants to help make New Zealander’s ultimate cricket dreams come true, whether it be as a fan, player, coach, manager, teacher, parent or team. Anyone with a cricket dream can apply. The believers. The dreamers.”
“The whole campaign was focused on extending what we usually do with our sponsorship,” explained ANZ’s head of sponsorship Sue McGregor in an earlier article. “We’ve got a grants scheme that we run every year, and that’s about providing value to those who participate in cricket. Dream Big started with a call to entry saying, ‘Tell us what your dream is and we’ll help you achieve it’. So it was really just the grants scheme on steroids.”
This has now been updated to extend beyond cricket, leading to rugby and football clubs sending in entries to have their facilities upgraded.
And while ANZ doesn’t explicitly mention the All Blacks or the Rugby World Cup in the ad, this is a clever example of the bank muscling in on the territory of ASB, which pays a hefty sum to sponsor the All Blacks.
