Browsing: banking

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BNZ embraces etymology to make a point about mortgages
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When creating a marketing campaign, ‘death’ and ‘pledge’ are typically words to avoid, unless you want your customers to think you are locking them into something sinister. But BNZ and Colenso BBDO have purposefully pulled these unused words out of the hat to create a new meaning for mortgages across a technical campaign.

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In your face, cards: ANZ turns smartphones into payphones with app update
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Talk of the cashless society has abounded at least since the beginning of this century, but a surge in contactless payments suggests cash may not be king for much longer. And cards could be on the way out too, because, following on from the launch of Semble earlier this year, ANZ has announced the release of its goMoney wallet, which lets customers to pay with their smartphones.

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Horse’s Mouth: Craig Herbison, BNZ
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After Craig Herbison was appointed as BNZ’s chief marketing officer in 2011, his first big act was to launch the new brand platform in the form of a polarising, existential teaser campaign that asked whether money was good or bad (answer: neither, it’s what you make of it that counts). Since then he’s made ‘Be Good with Money’ a central pillar of the business and around one year ago, he was promoted to director of retail banking and marketing. So, after saying goodbye to the Airpoints scheme and launching another confronting campaign about the perils of not planning ahead, are the marketing efforts paying dividends?

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Let the panting begin: ten Kiwis get ready to ‘run down’ their home loan rates at the ASB Auckland Marathon
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ASB previously put its clients to work by getting them to accumulate as many likes as possible in return for lower mortgage rates. And for its latest campaign, the bank is again giving some of its customers control of how low their interest rates might go—but this time they have to sweat for it. As part of its ‘Run Down Your Rate’ competition, the bank has selected ten customers who will be able to run down their interest rates during the ASB Auckland Marathon.

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Making Kashin cashless: ASB gives its moneybox a digital makeover
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Since 1964, Kashin, the ASB moneybox, has been an inhabitant of countless Kiwi homes, serving as a tool used by parents to teach their kids about the value of money. However, at a time when coins have become something of a rarity, Kashin was becoming a largely unused anachronism—a white elephant, if you will. So, in response, ASB and Saatchi & Saatchi have given Kashin a digital makeover and introduced a new moneybox called Clever Kash.

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Lost and found: ASB trumpets its alternative to card cancellation woes
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In most instances, losing an item is little more than a frustration, but it can be quite a major problem when the said item is a credit card. Usually, the relisation that a credit card is missing is followed by about 20 minutes of manic searching, 30 minutes of concern about where you were pick-pocketed and then the painful recognition that you’ll have to cancel the card for security’s sake. Then, once the card is cancelled, nothing is quite as annoying as finding the now useless piece of plastic lying in your wardrobe under your trousers and realising that it just fell out of the pocket of your jeans (yes, this is a personal experience).

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Puns fly across print and social media after Air NZ and Westpac announce partnership
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It’s been just a few days since Air New Zealand announced its departure from Airpoints partner BNZ to team up with Westpac, but banking brands have fast taken action pushing themselves out through social media via sponsored posts (featuring an array of creative airline puns) to make sure they’re not overshadowed by the new partnership deal. Here’s what BNZ, Westpac, Kiwibank and ANZ have been up to.

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Cutting rates and cutting shapes: Kiwibank customers dance like no-one’s watching
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Kiwibank has been beating the drum of independence since it was founded in 2001 and it made it very explicit in its last ad when it printed out a bunch of bank records, made them into a huge banner and shouted it from the rooftops. That ad featured a range of proudly independent staff and its next effort, also via Assignment, features proud customers dancing a dance of financial independence.

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Part two of ANZ campaign reverses a series of unfortunate events
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Following on from the series of unfortunate events that provided the narrative for the first part of ‘Time really is money’ campaign, ANZ has now released a sequel that gives a markedly more positive re-imagining of the day in the protagonist’s life. The second spot, released over the weekend, gives a scene-by-scene reversed reworking that eventually presents ANZ’s mobile banking as the catalyst that allowed the evening’s proceedings to run more smoothly.

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ANZ dips toe into digital publishing with BlueNotes
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To some degree banks have always been publishers, producing voluminous pamphlets and documents relating to their accounts, interest rates and credit card deals. And while this has served the utilitarian purpose of providing information to both current and potential clients, it has always been a bit vapid in the story-telling department. So, in an effort to fill the narrative-shaped hole in its offering, ANZ has launched BlueNotes, a digital publishing site updated daily with news stories directly relevant to the bank and the financial industry.

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Visa PayWave in the skate bowl
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A new Australian ad conceptualised by Clemenger BBDO Sydney depicts skateboarders making Visa PayWave purchases while skating in the bowl. During the course of the 60-second TVC, various people (even a guy in a suit) are shown making payments, mid trick, for coffee, pizzas and tacos at an ad-hoc take-away store.

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New Kiwibank app aims to ease home hunting pains
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Kiwibank has centralised some of the key details about the property market in a new app that’s designed to enable prospective homebuyers to access all the information they need in one place. The app can be used to obtain pre-loan approval, peruse available houses, track the number of sunshine hours a home receives and check which homes are available in a neighbourhood.

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The return of the profit: The Co-operative Bank celebrates its coming of age—and its main point of difference
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The Co-operative Bank rebranded from PSIS after it got its official bank license last year. And while it kept pretty quiet about the change, it has come out swinging with a new campaign via Y&R that flips the typically negative response to the announcement of record bank profits on its head and aims to show it’s a bank that’s “driven by your prosperity, not our profit”.

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ASB Bank #LikeLoan trades Facebook Likes for chance at cheaper home loan
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ASB Bank was the first in the country to offer social media banking through Facebook and now stands to become the first in the country (if not the world) to offer a home loan rate completely dependent on the number of Likes it receives on Facebook. Although the premise of the competition is simple, its actual mechanics are shrouded in mystery.

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Westpac pushes its business banking with Wayne’s worrisome work/life balance
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We Kiwis like to think we’ve got it sorted, living as we do in our little slice of ‘100% Pure’ paradise. But we have plenty of demons and the truth is that New Zealand is “one of the worst-ranking OECD nations in terms of the percentage of the population that works ‘very long hours'”. So Westpac and DDB have dramatised that fact with another entertaining ad as part of its ‘Start Asking’ campaign that shows the pitfalls of owning your own business.

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Mobile music
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How do you promote the launch of ‘Europe’s first fully-digital mobile bank’? You connect 227 mobile devices together and get a 60-strong orchestra to play a digital version of Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen.

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In your space: Westpac
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Banks are increasingly cottoning onto the importance of the customer experience, and Westpac’s signature store at 79 Queen Street (which opened late last year) is a prime example.

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BNZ wants you to be good with YouMoney
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Last week BNZ Bank sent members of the media blue cakes in the shape of a brain, prompting us at StopPress to theorise the upcoming launch of a youth orientated product based around zombies. It seems we were half right.

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Studies have shown: ASB and Saatchi talk to the kids the old-fashioned way
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At this time of year, many university students are looking forward to heading back to the family ranch, regularly opening the fridge to marvel at all the food inside and, possibly, attempting to dry out after a torrid year of mind expansion/erosion. They—and their secondary school friends who are about to embark on the next phase of education—probably aren’t thinking too much about banking. But ASB and Saatchi & Saatchi are dangling a few carrots with a new 50’s-inspired online video campaign to promote its tertiary accounts.

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