The FINANCIAL — Finally, Georgian companies have come up with innovative ideas to convince their customers that their products are special. The latest TV ads featuring the Three Musketeers, “Mr. Rex”, and Benjamin Franklin have all brought in quite large numbers of customers, the advertisers claim.
To make its internet and mobile banking more popular and in demand TBC Bank in cooperation with DDB Poland and No Name Studio decided to use the theme of The Three Musketeers as they are a symbol of strength and friendship. As TBC Bank CEO Vakhtang Butskhrikidze says, the new advertising campaign achieved its goal and numbers of internet and mobile banking users are gradually increasing.
“Currently the number of mobile banking users exceeds 25,000 and mobile bank transactions are gradually increasing too,” said Vakhtang Butskhrikidze. “The Bank has ambitious plans for 2014. We want to increase the number of our mobile and internet banking users significantly. Their number should exceed the number of transactions in TBC Bank branches. The Three Musketeers advertisement has had a positive effect on the popularization of mobile banking and we will continue this PR campaign next year as well,” he added.
According to the statistics of Youtube and Facebook the Three Musketeers advert has been seen by more people than the Bank’s five most popular advertisements put together. 91 percent of visitors watched the clip to its end, which means that the majority of the customers saw 30 seconds of the 33 second clip. “This is a very high figure. If we take into consideration last year’s figures we will see that the Three Musketeers advertisement was 30 times more effective than any previous advertisement of the Bank’s has been,” said Butskhrikidze.
80 percent of respondents interpreted the message correctly, according to research. “This means that the message was transmitted correctly and had a high level of efficiency,” he added. “The research shows that the new advertising campaign increased not only the number of online transactions but also improved the attitudes of our competitor banks’ customers towards us. This is a good outcome,” he said.
After two weeks of showing the video there was a 15 percent increase in the number of TBC Bank corporate website visitors. The average length of stay on the website increased by 38 percent, according to research.
Gary Koeb, Marketing & Brand Development Director at TBC Bank, says that it depends on the private opinions of people whether they like or dislike any particular movie, book or clip and does not represent a serious argument for marketing managers. “It is well known that loyalty is connected to the emotional attitudes of people. It is not consistent and depends on the person’s mood and external factors. From a marketing point of view four factors are important – whether people watch the clip or not, understand it or not, how the clip affected the brand and the customer’s attitude. If the campaign has positive results and the answers to these four questions are positive, then it does not particularly matter whether people liked it or not. As for us, TBC Bank has had positive answers to all the questions,” Koeb said.
Out of 800 customers of the banking sector 61 percent said that the clip was effective while 18 percent remain neutral, according to the research. “In any country where 80 percent of the customers see your advertisement and rate it positively then that means that you have certainly been successful in your campaign,” he said.
Bank Republic marketing managers also think that putting across the message of “difficult” banking products in an easy-to-understand way is very important for successful sales of the product. In this case, Bank Republic introduced Benjamin Franklin to make the Bank’s loan products be in greater demand.
“The banking product which we offered to customers is innovative and is directly related to our position that “All of us are important”,” said Ekaterine Toroshelidze, Strategic Marketing and Product Development Division Co-Head at Bank Republic. “As we care about having a long term and successful relationship with our customers we tried to develop an advertising campaign which would have a positive resonance. The idea of the new product was to offer the opportunity of cash-back to customers when repaying a loan. We think that this initiative will contribute to the development of deposits. Together with a low interest rate Bank Republic offered savings at the same time, which means that while repaying the loan a part of the money will be returned to the customer. As the product was innovative we asked the advertising company ABK to give this message to customers in an easily-understandable way. Using Benjamin Franklin in the advert’s clip was a very original decision which put across the message of the cash-back concept in a memorable way. If we take into consideration the positive results of the advertisement it means that the clip has worked successfully. This offer will be continuing till the end of the year so we still do not have all the customer statistics. However, we do expect the final results to be impressive,” she added.
A man with a dog’s head – “Rex”, GPI Holding’s new face of its advertising was created to help convince people that insurance in general is important. The insurance company decided that as a dog is a symbol of loyalty and trustworthiness it was a good idea to build their advertising campaign around it.
“The insurance market is in the process of development, but the volume of insurance products in use is very low,” said Tina Stambolishvili, Head of Marketing Communications at GPI Holding. “The main obstacle in selling an insurance product is a lack of information about the specific product as well as about the need for insurance in general. Accordingly, our aim was to make people see the benefits of having insurance. We united the idea of a dog’s loyalty and man’s logic with each other and got Mr. Rex. The company will continue in this direction and will use Rex in future clips as well. The reaction from people was varied – some liked it, some not. But the main thing is that it got people talking about insurance. Only one month has passed since GPI Holding started this advertising campaign and we have already seen an increase in the number of our customers and better sales,” she added.
Very soon after GPI Holding started its new advertising campaign a character similar to Rex appeared in a different advert – a Labrador sitting at the feet of a man in a chair was featured in an Aldagi advertisement. Some people considered it to be the beginning of an advertising war between the two insurance companies. In answer to the retaliatory move, Rex wrote on his Facebook page: “Everybody needs to take care of their job, Aldagi insures dogs, my friends from GPI and I – people. I was really glad that I got “followers” from competing companies, if we continue in the same way, both the insurance and advertising sectors will benefit.” As for Aldagi, its Deputy Director-General Nutsa Koghuashvili says that the pet insurance product was created due to high demand. “The company launched pet insurance because at this time there are 200 thousand families which have pets in Georgia,” she said.
Tariel Zivzivadze, professional business trainer and consultant, says that the recent advertising campaigns prove that marketing activities are on the rise in Georgia. “Active marketing campaigns mean that business is becoming more active in our country, which is really a very positive tendency I think. Let’s take TBC Bank as an example. It is a big bank with huge potential. It is able to take extraordinary steps, to offer innovations and underline its advantages in various forms. For me it was funny to see the Three Musketeers in TBC Bank’s advert clip. I do not think that this clip will increase the number of its internet and mobile banking users nor the Bank’s customers in general. But the fact is that people are talking about TBC Bank, are discussing the clip and there is attention surrounding the Bank. Sometimes this is also a goal,” he said.
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