THE RIGHT TUNE SHOW OF SUPPORT
With a vision to be the most loved power company, and a brand promise to ‘do business the Kiwi way’, ELECTRIC KIWI brought its comms strategy to life in 2020 with a catchy tune full of personality and a reminder of the brand’s benefits.
THE CHALLENGE
By the end of the 2020 financial year, brand tracking research showed awareness of the Electric Kiwi brand was at 44 percent, and preference seven percent. This put the power company in fifth place in the market, ahead of major challengers such as Flick and Powershop, but behind the big players such as Meridian, Genesis and Contact.
The percentage of awareness that the brand converted to preference was much higher than its competitors, but to achieve its vision of being New Zealand’s most loved power company, the marketing team needed to move the dial on awareness. So, it set an ambitious increased sales target of 22 percent FY21.
To achieve this, Electric Kiwi had to look beyond media spend – realising that it could not compete with the big five whose share of expenditure in the category was 72 percent compared to its six percent. To get to the most loved power company, Electric Kiwi needed to get more cut-through with its creative, and more efficacy with its media than the other guys.
THE RESPONSE
Electric Kiwi approached this challenge by employing an internal agency model for its creative. All advertising at Electric Kiwi is created in-house by its team of 10 (covering both the NZ and AU markets). This includes social media campaigns and content, print media, images for social and programmatic ads. It also includes production of its TVCS. The team write, produce, shoot, direct, edit and colour-grade in-house. Aware that a top agency could produce video work with higher production values, but at its budget levels, the marketing team didn’t believe that they could produce better ROI.
The team was able to produce the Electric Kiwi song TVC for less than $20,000, and this price point allowed for more money to go into media. The creative, ‘being a bit sh*t’ is part of what makes the brand stand out. Their customers know it’s authentic and respond to this well.
Another unique and powerful element of this campaign was the extent to which the fans of Electric Kiwi were encouraged to become involved. This included numerous versions of the song being created. The attention to grass roots is a large part of the value that Electric Kiwi is able to create, as well as the preference for the brand that it fosters.
THE RESULT
Following the campaign, Electric Kiwi achieved number one in preference, with 13 percent. This was an increase of six percent YOY and four percent higher than the next best (Meridian). Even though awareness has increased dramatically, Electric Kiwi is still by far the most effective in market at converting awareness into preference, as a result of the campaign.
In FY20 Electric Kiwi exceeded internal sales targets by nearly 20 percent, in a year with very significant Covid-19 impacts.
With flagging sponsorship attribution to the much-loved All Blacks, ASB needed a comms strategy that would not only improve its market position, but that of the many businesses the bank supports. So, what does it do? Give away the National rugby team of course! THE CHALLENGE
ASB has struggled for sponsorship attribution from within the banking industry. During the bank’s seven-year tenure with the All Blacks, its major competitors’ attribution has often outranked ASB. Realising that a new sponsorship approach was needed, ASB needed to find a unique on-brand activation that would sit well within the strict marketing rules outlined by NZ Rugby for the All Blacks. And, to compound issues, Covid-19 had just arrived on New Zealand shores. However, the bank saw this as an opportunity to not only help but increase their sponsorship attribution of the All Blacks.
When Covid-19 happened, the bank quickly realised that the health crisis was becoming a financial one with many small businesses becoming overwhelmed by the economy coming to an almost halt. Outside of providing financial support through their role as a bank, ASB also saw its responsibility was to challenge itself to genuinely support its customers, acting in their interests with purpose and integrity.
With every bank saying, “We’re here to help”, ASB wanted to demonstrate their support in a more tangible way.
So, the bank looked ahead of the immediate crisis, beyond financial help, and to the challenge of playing an outside role in actively kickstarting the New Zealand economy through the support it could give to its customers. This meant helping businesses to rebound as quickly as possible.
THE RESPONSE
To do this, it was clear that ASB’S role was as the wingman. What the bank needed to do was to give its customers the airtime, quite literally as it turned out, and turn its well-tuned marketing machine into something that was equally effective for its SME customers.
The real challenge would be scale – this needed to be something that would genuinely shine the spotlight on its customers and so couldn’t be tokenistic. But with New Zealand closed off from the world and sports cancelled, ASB’S biggest sponsorship asset – the All Blacks – was sitting idle.
But in adversity, ASB saw opportunity, and activated the All Blacks in a way only ASB could, flipping the script. Fans couldn’t support the All Blacks on the field, so ASB got the
All Blacks to support their fans on-camera. Literally giving the All Blacks and their marketing power away to businesses in need with ‘Borrow the All Blacks’.
THE RESULT
ASB’S Brand Love recorded its highest ever brand love score in 12 years. The bank more than doubled its sponsorship awareness of the All Blacks rising from 15 to 42 – a 180 percent increase. Pretty impressive when the bank spent the whole year promoting small businesses rather than itself.