The Olympics are impacting everything in Canada from media stories to marketing dollars, but one thing that one might not expect is its impact on the big-spending RSP investment season.
The country’s preoccupation with sport for most of February – prime RSP-selling season – meant that Scotiabank had to go the extra mile this year and create a campaign that was really impactful, Scotiabank’s director of marketing planning, Krista Vriend, tells MiC.
So they decided that if they were everywhere Canadians were, they probably couldn’t be ignored.
Scotiabank’s 2010 RSP campaign, with media by PHD in Toronto and creative by Bensimon Byrne, rolled out across Canada this week with a media strategy to mirror each execution with its placement. Including TV, OOH, print and online, each ad urges viewers not to avoid their RSP investment this year.
‘Avoid potholes. Not your RSPs,’ a highway billboard proclaims, while a commuter paper ad reads ‘Avoid the sneezy guy. Not your RSPs.’ Each directs consumers to ‘Get a Second Opinion’ with Scotiabank and offers them a chance to win $10,000 for coming in and speaking with a bank representative. Two prizes of $10,000 will be awarded weekly for a six-week period.
The media buy, which runs until the RSP deadline of Feb. 28, includes national TV, across both conventional and specialty stations and includes a brand-sell buy with CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada. Print was executed this week with cover takeovers in Metro‘s Toronto and Vancouver editions, including a cover wrap and six small-size ads within, each with a different message targeted at commuters. The cover wraps were a one-time buy, but the small-space, half-page and full-page ads will continue, variously, through February in Metro markets across the country.
The buy also includes domination ads in special RSP sections in the National Post and online with the Financial Post. Print ads in Canwest major-market dailies, the Globe and Mail and a selection of other Canadian dailies, will also appear throughout February. The buy extends into out-of-home with a Union Station-GO Concourse domination in Toronto through February, as well as digital OOH with Captivate and Adcentricity networks and a billboard on the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto (see image).
‘It’s already gotten a lot of response from competitors,’ Chris Bell, account supervisor, PHD Toronto, tells MiC. ‘We took an approach that would get us noticed. We wanted to dominate the media where our competition will be, and tailor the message to break through the clutter.’
The media strategy, in combination with the humorous, yet advice-oriented creative, was what really appealed to Scotiabank about the campaign, Vriend says.
‘The idea of doing something breakthrough and really having some things that are a bit intrusive to catch your attention in what is going to be an even more amplified and noisy season in the marketplace, that was really important to us,’ she says.
