Mindshare

First Direct - Little Frill Brand

Executive summary

In September 2014 First Direct took the decision to launch Little Frill, a fictional lizard that would act as the figurehead of the brand’s marketing activity. Tasked with raising awareness and increasing brand consideration, Mindshare took advantage of the breadth of newsbrand platforms to bring the lizard character to life. The vast array of newsbrand platforms proved to be a game-changer - with our 25-34 audience notoriously difficult to reach in national press, all assets came together to produce a truly multi-platform campaign that established Little Frill and reinforced First Direct’s position as the unexpected bank. This campaign ran for just a single week (a challenge in itself!), leaving no room for anything other than bold media behaviour.

Background and objectives

First Direct sit in a hugely competitive sector and are disadvantaged in not having a high street presence versus more traditional banks. The aim of the Little Frill campaign was to educate our target audience that first direct offer unparalleled customer service and underline their superior credentials versus the competition.

The Little Frill brand campaign fell into three stages; tease, announce and associate. The aim of the tease was to create intrigue around the lizard using unbranded assets, the launch was to drive to the Little Frill hub, with the associate to ensure frequency among our target audience, encouraging switching and with much more of a direct response focus.

The overall planning priority for this campaign was fame and stature, owing to the fact that first direct behaves in a completely different way to the competition. From a media planning perspective it was important to be loud and shouting in all the right places relevant to our young, tech-savvy audience. Thus, the specific role for newsbrands was to tap into this insight, and offer a platform to target this hard to reach demographic. While newsprint had a role for driving awareness and supercharging AV, we knew that tablet and digital display across news sites was our best bet to reach 25-34 adults. The end result was the first-ever tablet campaign for first direct courtesy of the publishing team.

The plan

The campaign’s short run-time meant that newsbrands had a limited window to introduce Little Frill to 25-34 adults and make a splash across platforms. Bold, striking media behaviour was a prerequisite; standout teaser formats across an array of national press titles created a sense of intrigue and encouraged readers to satisfy their curiosity by searching #LittleFrill. Yet, whilst newsprint could meet the need for mass coverage and deliver Little Frill in 3 million editions on the day, the campaign lent itself to a more interactive media solution. Fortunately, newsbrands were on hand to provide the ideal situation through tablet editions and mobile sites. In an instant, a very traditional campaign was transformed into an immersive experience with users pressed to engage with the brand through a tablet game.

Quite simply, newsbrands breadth of platforms prove key in securing budget that would not have been available to the publishing team otherwise.

Tablet activity ran across the entire week, taking over the Guardian, The Times and Metro app editions to name but a few. Strategy-wise, we sought to run throughout the week to drive as many game interactions as possible over the short period. A game mechanic was the ideal way to introduce a new character, encouraging deeper engagement than a one-off interstitial. Such an all-encompassing media plan stretching across platforms was built on sound reasoning; newsbrands reach 73% of 18-34 year olds every week, demonstrating the value of mobile and tablet to Little Frill.

Insight

The main objective for this campaign was to drive engagement with hissy lizard and reinforce First Direct’s reputation as a bank that differentiates itself from the competition. From research, we know that our 25-34 target audience aren’t huge consumers of national press versus other age groups, so we had to seek out a way of reaching this audience and make tablet the fulcrum of the publishing response. As a broadcast media, our role was to announce the character to a wider audience and create the intrigue that would drive users to other channels, notably social. All bases were covered to ensure that we had a platform to establish hissy lizard, breaking down as follows:

i) Tease – Establishing the lizard and driving intrigue around him ii) Announce – Drive awareness of the lizard with a Monday broadcast launch to

build awareness into the week with tablet iii) Define - Sync the campaign with one hashtag, #hissylizard, to tie up the social

conversation across channels

The nature of the creative lent itself perfectly to tablet - with animation and the game mechanic a huge part of the campaign, tablet and digital display were ideally suited to bring hissy lizard to life. Story was responsible for producing standout, innovative tablet creative that could run seamlessly across all publisher apps.

Results

Little Frill was a huge success with both Mindshare and the client pleased with the outcome. Running on tablet for the first time was a step into the unknown for first direct but one that proved wise; average tap rate across the campaign was an outstanding 2.9%, surpassing the industry average of 0.79%1 by a factor of 4. This is a particularly good result when you consider the nature of the advertiser; though banking may not have the wow factor that entertainment or fashion clients carry in their copy, the quality of the creative compelled users to interact with the content. Encouragingly, tablet also proved to be extremely cost effective with each click costing just £1.52. For a client with historically low spends in publishing, the efficiency of tablet bodes well for future activity. As the table shows, tablet drove impressive results:

                                                                                                                         1  http://www.newsworks.org.uk/News-­‐and-­‐Opinion/responses-­‐to-­‐tablet-­‐ads-­‐are-­‐up-­‐to-­‐40x-­‐higher-­‐than-­‐online-­‐  

News App Impressions Taps Tap rate % The Times 234,146 9,697 4.14%

the Guardian 854,810 1,508 0.18% Metro 119,579 3472 2.90%

The Week 4,766 202 4.24%

Totals 1,213,301 14,879 2.90%

Ultimately, the results underline the key role that publishers can play beyond traditional media. The myriad of platforms at First Direct’s disposal delivered engagement figures beyond reach and frequency, tapping into a new, previously untried channel. Quite simply, first direct’s foray into tablet demonstrates the value of taking a risk and trying a new medium. The extended reach of publishers cannot be underestimated; spend would not have materialised without the extended reach of newsbrands at our disposal.