Cba Determined To Be Different As It Defends Television Campaign

Cba Determined To Be Different As It Defends Television Campaign

Sydney Morning Herald
12 June 2008
Paul McIntyre

THE Commonwealth Bank blasted critics of its American advertising agency-led campaign this week, releasing figures to show brand recall and awareness for the bank are at record levels.

The country's biggest home lender also says it is making market share gains on rivals in mortgages and retail deposits and attributes the improvement in large part to its "determined to be different" ad effort, begun on January 26.

"There is unprecedented recognition of that line and its relationship to the Commonwealth Bank," said its chief marketing officer, Mark Buckman.

"If you look at the entire body of work, we have over 90 per cent [brand] recall and almost the same number in terms of correct branding. Our previous campaigns were below 50 per cent recall, and by the way the [banking] category norm is below 50 per cent. It's an outstanding result."

After a wave of criticism of the campaign from the advertising industry and media - John Singleton labelled the opening TV spot "obscene" and "a waste of money" - the Commonwealth Bank rolled out senior executives three weeks later to talk up the results. Just 12 days into the new marketing effort, they said, 64 per cent of people could remember the opening TV ad, unprompted, and 96 per cent were able to associate it with the bank.

The best result for any TV ad campaign in any category is usually about 50 per cent recall.

"I have to acknowledge that the success of the establishment of 'determined to be different' as a brand line for the Commonwealth Bank has absolutely been helped by the considerable interest from the media," Mr Buckman said this week.

He said in April that the bank had recorded a 0.34 percentage point market share increase in retail deposits to 29.38 per cent, the biggest deposit growth the bank has experienced since APRA started tracking results in 2004. Mr Buckman also cited the bank's rising home loan market share, which is up 0.6 per cent since June last year.

"Without doubt the flight away from non-bank lenders is absolutely in our favour, but it is not about that alone. Determined to be different is part of the overall improvement we are getting," he said.

"In the first quarter of this year we have continued to have market share growth across all our core lines of business and our customer satisfaction has continued to grow."

Since February the Commonwealth Bank has introduced another eight TV commercials and a wave of direct marketing and print ads.

Mr Buckman said planning had started for the second series of sitcom-style TV ads using a host of fictional American advertising agency characters.

"The ad industry continually complains that clients never take any risks and are too conservative, and when one finally does show some courage, the heat-seeking missiles come out to play," he said.

"It's almost no wonder many marketers are happy to stay with their heads below the parapet."

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