2013 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

We live in an intensely dynamic environment where consumer trends change daily and marketers are always trying to adapt and innovate in order to take a larger share of the ever fragmented customer’s attention. It is true that content is king and that creating relevant content is the only way to get customers engaged with our brand, but content without context is not as impactful… and this is where our idea came from: contextual content. On-screen pop ups are a form of television advertising that only a limited number of TV stations allow since some don’t have the technology and others simply don’t allow anything beyond regular TV spots. Pop ups are not totally new but contextual pop ups that are scheduled to appear during a specific movie scene with a customized message are. Contextualization was our main challenge and the reason why almost all the channels refused the execution. Besides the manual work that is required to plug in and release the pop up during a predefined and exact movie scene in real time, the risk of the pop up not appearing on time was very high and that was something they weren’t willing to be held accountable for.

Results

The New Year is a time for fixing finances and planning major purchases in the year ahead but it has also become synonymous with sales and discounts- a welcome start to the new year as consumers anticipate great bargains. So why don’t banks have New Year sales? To take advantage of this opportunity SABB decided to hold a New Year sale, just like any other retailer. The offer was for Loans at reduced rates, and discount vouchers for Credit Card applicants. We wanted to attract both new to bank customers and existing bank customers with our offers. Our aim was to make the SABB Sale famous reaching a wide audience with simple, price-driven messages, yet reflecting the prestige of the Bank. Consumers are accustomed to and attracted by the language and graphic style of ‘sale’ promotions. Using SABB’s well-known icons and red colour, we extended the typical retail sale language and style into personal finance products for the first time through the use of unconventional executions. To engage a wider audience, we set out to capture the attention of our audience at relevant moments when they least expected to hear from a bank. We inserted pop-up messages on the corner of the screen at relevant moments during prime-time movies on One TV a popular channel in KSA. When a film featured car crash, we offered low-rate car loans; as a movie showed marriage proposal, we offered wedding finance and on a movie scene set in a vacation location, we promoted personal loans. The campaignability of the idea has allowed us to plan future executions across the next month, to include home loans during movie scenes that show house moves or shabby houses. Our message was delivered in relevant and contextual way, bringing to life the uniqueness of bank on sale.

To engage a wider audience, we set out to capture the attention of our audience at relevant moments when they least expected to hear from a bank. We inserted pop-up messages on the corner of the screen at relevant moments during prime-time movies on One TV a popular channel in Saudi Arabia. When a film featured a car crash, we offered low-rate car loans; as a movie showed a marriage proposal, we offered wedding finance and on a movie scene set in a vacation location, we promoted personal loans. Our solution was disruptive, amusing and engaging and most importantly relevant.

Preliminary results, for the first four weeks of the campaign, showed Personal Loans up at least 13%, Home Loans up at least 20% and Credit Card applications up at least 20%, compared to the previous month.