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Nearly three years after launching its Blue Water Project, RBC is launching its first major marketing push for the $50 million environmental initiative.
Blue Water began in 2007 as a 10-year grant program to fund water conservation programs around the world. While it has been mentioned sporadically since then in isolated marketing executions, today sees the launch of a large-scale campaign created by Montreal agency Cloudraker.
The agency partnered with Eye Steel Film to create a series of short documentaries that profile a handful of the more than 200 grants Blue Water has issued so far. (Eye Steel shot the critically acclaimed Up the Yangtze.)
Three of the six planned short films are already available to view at WatchTheFilm.org, a branded YouTube channel.
With filming continuing on the next three chapters, Cloudraker hopes to create a full-length documentary from the shorter films by this autumn.
It was always RBC’s plan to launch a marketing effort for Blue Water after two years of operation, said Melissa Steadman, senior manager of global brand marketing, so that there would be enough project material to show the public. “It’s less about what we were going to do, and more about what we are doing and will continue to do.”
Three television ads, a cinematic trailer for the films and online display ads rolled out over the weekend with relatively light RBC branding. In the film trailer, the words “RBC presents” appear at the beginning, and the bank’s logo appears at the end along with the website address.
“We look at our brand as the foundation for this. We’re providing the stage for these grant recipients to be able to inspire a network of global citizens,” Steadman said. “RBC will always be presented as the enabler. It’s subtle, not in-your-face.”
“RBC in no way is part of the narrative of the content,” said Christina Brown, vice-president, creative at Cloudraker. “The idea is for [RBC] to connect these pieces of storytelling for consumers.”
Steadman connected with Cloudraker after a colleague showed her its “Jaune Uni” work for the Canadian Cancer Society.
Steadman said she knew any Blue Water campaign would have to be rooted in storytelling, but it was Cloudraker that suggested shifting the money earmarked for a traditional media campaign to the documentary concept. “That makes this a long-term approach…it’s an evolution and we’ll continue to do more segments to tell the bigger story.”
“We’re also going into social media, which is exciting for RBC,” said Brown, because the bank typically blocked social media sites such as YouTube from employees’ computers. With a large online component to the Blue Water campaign, the bank decided to make an exception to its policies and lift the locks on the blocked sites.
Over a two-week period, employees were encouraged to join Blue Water’s Facebook page and spread the word through social media channels to build an online audience for the campaign. When the Facebook page reached 10,000 members within 10 days of launching, the bank donated $10,000 to Free the Children, a Blue Water grant recipient featured in one of the short films.
“We have an expedition travelling around North America that will use the Facebook page as its hub,” Steadman said. “We also have an extensive relationship with National Geographic, where they have a significant campaign they’re about to launch with RBC about their own fresh water initiative. We’ll be leveraging our Facebook fan page and YouTube to extend that.”
Steadman also has several promotional “spikes” planned for the end of the year to keep the campaign’s momentum going. The social media plan extends into 2011.
“We’re new to the social media world and people are excited to see that there are things we can do in this space that make sense for us,” Steadman said. “Our employees kind of expected us to be [online], so we’re there and they’re celebrating it.”
RBC employees continued their promotional efforts offline on Friday, the first annual “Blue Water Day” that saw staffers wearing blue as a show of support for the project. Various fundraising and promotional events were scheduled to take place at RBC branches.
