Designed to target both existing and new customers, BMO has launched its first major North American campaign since appointing Y&R its creative agency of record late last year.
The campaign introduces consumers to BMO’s new tagline, “We’re here to help” (replacing “Making money make sense”), and new creative with a heavy focus on financial guidance and customer service.
According to Joanna Rotenberg, chief marketing officer and head of strategy for BMO Financial Group, the brand strategy remains the same as previous campaigns; the new tagline and ads are an effort to refine its “focus and brand promise.” It’s also meant to appeal to consumers across North America. BMO (operating in the U.S. as BMO Harris Bank) serves more than two million U.S. customers with 600 branches across eight states.
“While the core of our strategy is absolutely the same, how we express it to the market and with our employees is the area that’s changing,” Rotenberg said.
“We wanted something that really expressed who we were in a really meaningful way to the marketplace, but did a few things for us. One is we want to keep it really simple, so that everyone could understand it and relate to it… We also wanted to be relevant across our entire bank, whether you’re a teller, an investment banker, in Quebec or in the U.S. … “We’re here to help” is what we’re using across the entire bank and we thought that had real power to it.”
“We wanted to have a brand and a tagline that was relatable for where people are at,” meaning a market where people are planning for the future in terms of months as opposed to years,” said Rotenberg. “Research showed that while existing customers were happy, non-customers just didn’t have clarity on what we stood for. At the end of the day, we know we’re successful if we bring what customers love about us to the rest of the market in a way that’s relatable, understandable and gets at the heart of financial decisions people are making, but also has a little bit of fun with it.”
Co-created by Y&R’s Toronto, Montreal and Chicago offices, campaign elements include digital, social and TV, and is running across Canada and in the U.S. There’s also a massive out-of-home push and subway domination, centred mainly in Toronto and, to a lesser extent, Montreal. More than 300 out-of-home pieces, including superboards, transit shelter and streetcars ads, are on display across Toronto alone.
In more than 200 spaces within Toronto’s Yonge and Bloor subway station, there are mirrored ads featuring copy that says “Am I investing enough?” and “Can I look this good at 65?”
“We wanted it to hold people’s attention… take the media and make it a little more engaging,” said Gavin Bayley, senior vice-president, global client leader for Bank of Montreal, North America. “When people are on their commute… this is when financial questions start to lurk in their minds.”
“We’re here to help,” is unique in the sense that it was largely conceived by actual BMO employees, Rotenberg said. In the months leading up to the campaign’s launch, staffers were invited to take part in workshops and provide feedback and suggestions related to the soon-to-be-revealed tagline. On Oct. 1, all of BMO’s 46,000 employees were greeted by a takeover of their desktops displaying the new brand positioning.
“At the end of the day, you’re only as good as your employees. We can put whatever we want out there in the market and if our employees don’t stand behind it, then it’s an empty promise. We wanted to have something that employees really saw themselves part of,” Rotenberg added.
Maxus handled the media buy.
