The Brand
NAB Business Regional and Agri Calendar
The Media Owner
Mindshare
Executive Summary
As the #1 bank for Agribusiness, NAB had a desire to connect more deeply and demonstrate their enduring commitment and expertise to this audience. The idea: Turn a 55-year-old calendar into emotional story content that celebrates customers’ achievements. And then dedicate the bank’s media space to provide them with a platform to share these inspiring stories and strategies for success for other businesses to learn from. The results speak for themselves. As of March 2022, 39% of all business lending growth in NAB Business and Private Banking came from Regional and Agribusiness despite only accounting for 29% of total businesses in Australia.
The Brief
- To defend and grow NAB’s Agribusiness market share (31%) by driving targeted
awareness and consideration of NAB as the #1 bank for Agribusiness - Drive 5% growth in lending products
The Bigger Purpose
To serve customers well and help communities prosper.
One of the ways in which NAB does this is through the NAB Regional and Agri Calendar which promotes and elevates agribusiness by featuring twelve businesses every year. The calendar is an integral part of the Agribusiness customer and banker relationship; for over 55 years it has been hand delivered to customers across the country in December and hung in farms and offices with the new one replacing the old. Bankers use the meeting as an opportunity to check in on the year that has been, discuss customers’ plans for the year ahead and leave with opportunities to help bring those plans to life. This consistency and care have produced a marketing program unlike any other, where customers chase bankers to avoid missing out, and to appear in the calendar is both ‘an honour and a dream’.
The Insight
Agribusiness owners turn to each other to learn how to grow.
With Agribusiness challenged in 2021 by flood, fire, drought, the pandemic, a mouse plague and even an earthquake it was more important than ever to celebrate customers who had overcome adversity and triumphed against the odds.
While competitors were talking to Agribusiness owners in a rational way and investing primarily in areas where they could get the biggest bang for their buck (metro and regional print titles and digital performance media), we chose to speak to them in an emotional way adopting an audience first approach to demonstrate NAB’s enduring commitment.
The Idea: Celebrate customers’ stories
To do this we pushed NAB’s powerful owned asset – the NAB Agri and Regional Calendar – further to create emotional story content to celebrate our customers’ achievements. And then we dedicated the bank’s media space to provide our customers with a platform to share their inspiring stories and strategies for success for other businesses to learn from.
The Execution
Mindshare brought three of the stories from the calendar to life, in the form of online videos, (3 x 10 sec films plus 1 x 30 second her film). These were supported by print and outdoor adverts.
YouTube accompanied Facebook’s reach and elevated the hero video, allowing the ability to target agribusiness owners. While LinkedIn and Facebook targeted awareness and consideration, to deepen customers’ consideration with individuals familiar with NAB, as well as new-to-brand customers.
While the AFR was purposely selected for its strong agribusiness owner’s readership but with many competitors in the market, dictated how the placement was used. The AFR Agribusiness Magazine provided personalised storytelling and a quality environment. The Land, Stock and Land and The Weekly, were chosen as their stories are written by, for and about people living in rural areas.
Physical presence in large format and retail panels allowed the advert to stand out as there is little clutter in this environment. These allowed the messaging to be front of mind and highlighted how NAB benefits the community.
The Results
As of March 2022, 39% of all business lending growth in NAB Business and Private Banking came from Regional and Agribusiness despite only accounting for 29% of total businesses in Australia.
Engagement with the video content exceeded expectations
- 17% increase in YouTube View Through Rate (VTR) vs planned. Even with a TrueView buy (Skip after 5sec), the campaign delivered a VTR of 53%.
- 121% increase in Facebook Lands vs planned
- 15.04% video completion rate (VCR) on LinkedIn, double the agency benchmark of 7%
The campaign drove uplifts in consideration and recall for NAB as the #1 Business Bank
- 1.7% uplift in total consideration
- 3.3% uplift in consideration for Men and P45-544 (demographics consistent with the Agribusiness owners)
As of March 2022:
- #1 in market with a 33.97% share, up from 31% in January 2021 (9.6% increase)
- Annual lending revenue up 5%, achieved 6 months ahead of target
