Jessica Lee, brand and communications manager for Aviva Asia, which first entered the region's life insurance sector four years ago, warns: "Financial brands in Asia risk repeating age-old themes in their creative and losing sight of what really matters to consumers." On top of this, people no longer see a single brand as the be-all and end-all for their financial needs, Lee points out, with consumers now having multiple brand relationships as they shop around with an eye for the deal that suits them best.
With brands old and new jostling for the hearts and the wallets of today's demanding consumers, Media looks at five briefs from financial brands around the region, and how their agencies responded.
Brief Create positive futures for people who challenge themselves to stay ahead
Brand Aviva
Market Regional
Agencies M&C Saatchi Singapore, Zenith Media Singapore
Media used TV, print, outdoor
Aviva, the largest insurer in the UK and the fifth-largest in the world, only entered Asia's life insurance market in 2002, as a new and relatively unknown brand in the region. In tandem with its ambitions to grow and protect its Asian businesses, Aviva launched its first regional brand campaign in June this year.
The primary targets were the C-suites, opinion-formers and thought-leaders. Aviva has a strong intermediated business where it distributes products through banks and financial advisers, so the campaign had to address these corporate relationships. A key secondary audience however was staff and potential employees — retaining and attracting a small but highly sought-after talent pool in Asia is crucial to growing business.
The campaign brief was based on proprietary research that showed consumer trust in insurance companies stands at an all-time low. Consumers are no longer choosing insurance companies based on their products and services but increasingly by their brands. Aviva needed to invest in its brand to grow familiarity and trust to take on the more mature insurance players with a longer history in Asia.
The creative idea therefore aimed to create brand familiarity and affinity with what Aviva represents, not what it sells. The company wanted its target audience — successful individuals — to experience a strong financial brand with a forward-thinking vision, with ads playing at a deep seated personal level that allowed Aviva to compete as a challenger brand in the region at the same time.
Aviva's creative agency, M&C Saatchi, also needed to create a big idea that challenged category conventions and naturally extended from Aviva's 'Forward thinking' corporate essence.
The outcome was a business-to-business campaign, 'Who says I can't?', that intentionally stayed away from overtly selling the Aviva business — as a challenger brand, the creative idea aimed to create brand familiarity and affinity for what Aviva stands for, not what it sells. The campaign used duotone images as a way to help establish Aviva's corporate colour, yellow. A blue duotone provided the backdrop for this to happen.
The campaign reflected an attitude that Aviva hopes will mark it out from the competition by showing almost intimate moments of self-belief. In one TVC, the main talent looks back on all the discouragement he received as a young boy, and ends him with him thanking the people who discouraged him for giving him the will to succeed. "The new breed of consumer will increasingly choose financial services for what they stand for," says Jessica Lee, brand and communications manager for Aviva Asia.
Brief Reinforce brand credibility by strengthening a professional and progressive image Brand Hang Seng Bank Market Hong Kong, China Agencies,/b> Leo Burnett Hong Kong, Arc Hong Kong, Maxus Communications Media used,/b> TV, print, point of sale
As a bank with a long history in Hong Kong, Hang Seng sees its close affinity with local people and businesses, coupled with a reputation for good service, as one of its main strengths.
Growing demand for wealth management services has changed the dynamic of the market in recent years however, a need arising from longer life expectancies and the rapid rise of young affluent consumers who are increasingly acquiring their wealth at a younger age than previous generations. With this in mind, Hang Seng saw its brand campaign objective as two-fold: to create a close connection with the community by reinforcing the brand's strength and credibility; but also to rejuvenate the brand with a professional and progressive image, highlighting wealth management offerings to increase its appeal with the younger group.
Under the tagline 'Managing wealth for you, with you', Hang Seng's creative agency Leo Burnett helped kick off a comprehensive communication campaign in May 2006, that ranged from TV ads covering different financial services offered by the bank, to the interior design of bank branches. Leveraging on the brand's understanding of the community, the campaign idea rested on an authenticity that deliberately broke away from the category-stereotyped images on how consumers can become smarter or happier after taking out professional financial services.
The ads therefore used a testimonial approach, featuring real stories endorsed by loyal Hang Seng customers in order to strengthen emotional connections with the brand and strengthen its credentials as a brand deeply rooted in Hong Kong, with genuine insights into the financial needs of local people and businesses, and the ability to offer professional solutions to those needs.
The first ad, launched in May this year, featured Charlie Yip, managing director of OTO Bodycare, who described how Hang Seng's services for small and medium-sized businesses helped him through tough times in Hong Kong, such as during the financial crisis and Sars.
The second ad, which followed in July, shed light on Hong Kong's first Olympic gold medallist, windsurfer Lee Lai Shan, as an ordinary person, who entered a new stage of her life needing to make plans to raise her daughter after all the applause of being a champion. In the ad she described why she chose Hang Seng's investment services to help her achieve her financial goals for her family.
The third ad in the series, launched in October, featured a renowned conductor for the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Yip Wing Sie. Yip shared her views on how to better manage the uncontrollable occurrences of life and how Hang Seng's insurance plans help her achieve that.
Following the launch, the campaign generated favourable buzz from the Hong Kong community, with the TV ads drawing considerable editorial commentary among local newspapers. Oracle's Banking Industry Monitoring Study showed that brand preference for Hang Seng had increased by 21 per cent after the campaign launched.
Brief Break through the clichés and white noise; make the brand more accessible Brand Axa Market Australia Agencies Grey Worldwide Media used TV, outdoor, transit, press
In Australia, financial advertising scores the lowest awareness with consumers of any category. The financial category is littered with serious, forgettable advertising promoting products that are hard to tell apart. Consumers consider financial plans to be rigid, remote and restrictive and typically avoid the subject until a life event — a child or divorce — forces their hand. Only 19 per cent of Australians have a formal financial plan.
Grey's task was to break this convention and bond people to Axa. The fact that consumers are unable to buy directly from Axa, working through a financial adviser instead, coupled with the size of Axa's budget — one-third of its chief competitor — added to the challenge. The primary objective was to more favourably dispose consumers to a recommendation of an Axa product from their financial adviser and, secondly, to get those without a financial adviser to find one through Axa.
The agency's idea was to say Axa could deliver 'whatever you really want in your life right now', by showing how the insurer understands individual and unpredictable aspects of life. To show Axa could offer people something desirable and relevant, Grey set out to change the perception of a financial plan, from a rigid process requiring people to sacrifice now for a distant pay-off into something consumers want in their lives now, with advertising that speaks to people as real individuals with a new voice. Abandoning financial-speak and fear-mongering, this new voice used human truths couched with humour to describe consumers' concerns that were branded as Axa plans, such as 'The Axa "I don't want to be working when I'm 80" Plan', 'The Axa "My 28 year old son won't leave home" Plan' and 'The Axa "I'm suddenly running the company" Plan'.
By adding levity and reality to the tribulations of life, the campaign followed a principle of 'love my ads; love my company'. Grey used multiple messages in the market to convey Axa's offer of solutions for everyone, launching with TV and some 35 outdoor messages that were customised by their environment for added impact.
Some of the targeted media placements included the McLeod's Daughters TV series — 'The Axa "When Mr Right turns out to be Mr Wrong" Plan'; Sydney Airport Qantas Lounge — 'The Axa "I'd rather be carrying a suitcase than a briefcase" Plan'; the Sydney Monorail — 'The Axa "I feel like I'm going around in circles" Plan'; and over the freeway on the way into Melbourne — 'The AXA "I'd rather be driving the other way" Plan'.
The campaign's success in Australia, generating a huge increase in predisposition and a record number of leads, has seen it exported to the UK and launched in Hong Kong, China and Singapore, with rollouts in additional Asia-Pacific markets, including pan-regional TV, slated for 2007.
Brief Create an image of a service that supports young people as they reach for their dreams Brand Lake Market Japan Agencies Hakuhodo, Tripleseven Interactive Media used Online
Hakuhodo and Tripleseven Interactive created a website that eschewed the usual financial information in favour of simple and easy to grasp visuals in order to build affinity with young consumers for Lake, GE Consumer Finance's Japanese personal loans brand.
Directed to the website from banner ads placed on Yahoo Japan and Infoseek, potential customers were first presented with a website that looked very different to the usual offerings from financial companies — an uncluttered screen with a blank backdrop consisting mainly of a question 'What do you want?', a box to type in the answer and a search button.
After pressing the search button, the website started pulling different images of the desired item, pictures of cars or MP3 players for example, from all over the web. These images tumbled down the screen, piling up into an increasingly large and cluttered mound at the bottom. After a while another button appeared, this time with the cautionary message 'Plan your usage'. This button took consumers to the Lake website. The approach proved to be a hit, with news of the website spreading virally through bulletin boards, personal blogs and emails. At the campaign peak, page views fell just short of 140,000 a month.
Brief Find out how to grow the non-life insurance business in a saturated market Brand Bangkok Insurance Market Thailand Agencies Creative Juice\G1 Media used TV, print, radio, outdoor, ambient media
Bangkok Insurance became one of the first insurance companies in Thailand to break from the sector's traditionally institutional image in favour of more consumer-centric advertising, after opting to shift its focus from the price-driven commercial insurance sector to personal insurance, following a workshop with Creative Juice\G1.
Despite personal insurance being a relatively uncompetetive area, Bangkok Insurance still had to contend with its target youth audience's low awareness of the different types of insurance available. The result was a series of ads linked by the slogan 'Maximum care', conveying the message that the company was concerned about every aspect of safety in people's lives. In addition to traditional TV and radio ads highlighting different areas of insurance, the campaign used different media to highlight how much it cared, such as a mirror attached to the headrest in a taxi, with a branded message 'Beware of motorcycles', for the benefit of passengers sitting in the back.
This concept was further developed in a follow-up campaign showing how the company took a stand on claim agents, often perceived by consumers as people who took advantage of grey areas of insurance deals to maximize company profits. These ads, tied with the common tagline of 'Walking in client's shoes is our policy', showed how Bangkok Insurance changed the mind of an unsympathetic claim agent disputing a claim, such as arranging to have the agent's house or car destroyed.
The shift of focus, and the campaigns that went with it, delivered significant boosts to both Bangkok Insurance's revenue and profits.