From dominating the Pam Am Games to making a talking penguin the face of its brand, 2015 was the year CIBC leapfrogged the competition and set itself apart. Despite being the smallest of Canada’s five big banks, CIBC made bold, courageous moves this year, spurned convention and proved that it could punch above its weight.
Nowhere was CIBC more visible this year than as lead sponsor of the 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am Games. The brand transformed Pearson International Airport into a welcoming zone for visitors and athletes, installed nearly 50 clean-energy-powered ATMs across the Games’s venues and presented Panamania, a 35-day arts and cultural festival that featured more than 250 exhibitions and performances. Its #PanAmazing social program generated 76.5 million impressions, 13.2 million engagements and 12.4 million video views.
According to a report from Toronto-based Solutions Research Group, CIBC was the most-noticed Pan Am sponsor, with 32% of people reporting that they noticed the bank’s messaging on an unaided basis. The bank’s social media presence surpassed all previous sponsorships results with awareness exceeding Olympic sponsors by approximately 50%.
All this was happening as the bank was rolling out a new brand positioning with an updated tagline, “Banking that fits your life.”
The effort, developed by creative agency Juniper Park, saw Percy the Penguin take centre stage. Percy (first introduced in ads for CIBC’s Aventura travel points program in 2013) and his family are designed as a metaphor for the bank’s clients.
“So often in competitive bank advertising, it’s all about the bank, and CIBC is all about the consumer,” said Jill Nykoliation, CEO, Juniper Park. “When you put a mirror up and say this is what our customer looks like, [they] can say, ‘Wow, I don’t look like that, that’s not reflective of my life.’ So instead of looking for a mirror, [we looked for] a magnet.
“For seemingly the most conservative bank, I think they take the bravest steps in marketing. They have a smaller spend, but you feel their presence everywhere because it’s so cohesive.”
The unique strategy is paying off. CIBC reports an average of 4% year-over-year growth since 2014 in key brand image statements, data that measures what clients value most in their banking relationship.
A series of four videos, shared across social media saw a costumed larger-than-life Percy hit the streets of Toronto to show consumers how to use the bank’s recently-introduced mobile deposit feature. The video series, titled, “Release the Penguin,” garnered more than 5 million views, 31.3 million impressions and 6.9 engagements.
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