#OrchidsandOnions: Campaign with cojones
I’ve said this before but it bears repeating. In South Africa, there is one surefire wire to change the conversation topic around the dinner table or braai from the pathetic government of ours or crime. And that is a simple question: Everyone happy with their bank?
Guaranteed – no matter what company you find yourself in – the anger will come pouring out. And it won’t be directed at one specific financial institution … they all disappoint their customers.
We use two banks in our household – FNB and Nedbank. And we’ve had issues (sometimes serious ones, like when Nedbank “lost” our house deposit somewhere in its system for a week) … but it’s such a hassle to change banks (and you have to be really angry to do so).
It’s a brave banking brand, then, which decides to wade in with a campaign which is, well, almost anti-banking.
Yet, that is what Nedbank has done in a major new, big-bucks brand splash put together by its ad agency, Joe Public. The agency describes the concept as “anti-advertising” … they’re going where no bank has gone before.
At first, I was sceptical, particularly as first viewings of the commercials left one wondering:
And what is the point of this?
That’s because, unusually for a bank – which wants to make a fat load of money out of you by allowing you to get in over your head – Nedbank is pointing at our excessive consumer lifestyle and warning about its pitfalls.
So, we see a gent in his fancy, V8-powered car roaring through the wild countryside, with a warning in the background: this is the way to send your cashflow into the red. (A nice little touch is the badge on the boot: Burden 500.)
Then, we see a woman on the perpetual upgrade treadmill for smartphones and the message: trying to keep up but never getting ahead in an endless cycle of spending.
Ditto with the basketball hipster who won’t be cool without the latest, expensive sneakers. And the woman who plunges into debt lusting over the finer things in life, like designer perfume.
Having looked at all of the ads, I came around to admiring and respecting the way Nedbank and Joe Public had the guts to send a sobering message.
The best part, though, was the brilliant catchline: “Do you want a bank that takes your money, or do you want a bank that takes your money seriously?”
Although there are a host of other executions – from print to billboards and even an “activation” in the streets of Sandton recently – it is the TV and video ads which sum up the high quality of the campaign.
No surprise there, given that it is one of this country’s finest ad directors, Greg Gray of Romance Films, who oversaw the production. From the sly rip-off of all the great advertising genres and brands to the little details, this is ad-making at its finest.
PR horror show, part 2:
First Onion goes to a PR who hasn’t heard of the PR golden rule: scatter-gun press releases don’t work. Wanting to pitch an interview with participants in some documentary or other, he couldn’t be bothered in addressing it to individual media people, thereby ensuring that most who received it binned it.
If you can’t get your PR foot in the door – we journos instinctively don’t like having the same material as everyone else – you’re wasting your time.
Even more of the sort of cheek which always wins an Onion came from another PR pitching a competition.
Not only was the pitch also addressed to everybody and his dog, the prize offered – a piddling R1,000 – was not just inadequate, it was insulting. You expect me to give you space worth tens of thousands for that sort of money? You don’t understand the media.
But the icing on the cake was the implied “miss this and miss out” comment: Space is limited.
Hold me back!
I still can’t believe brands get charged actual money for these sorts of PR “services”.
