Doodles theme for Westpac

By IRENE CHAPPLE

Westpac's transtasman advertising overhaul, being spearheaded by creative from Saatchi & Saatchi, will be revealed tomorrow.

Westpac's call for pitches last year - worth around $35 million to the lead agency - created huge excitement in the advertising industry.

Not only was the money big and the account transtasman, the pitch was seen as a test for Saatchi & Saatchi, the bank's incumbent, after two troubled years.

Westpac was a core client for Saatchi & Saatchi, which had created the previous "Knowledge" campaign.

Despite its high-profile advertising and long television slots, the highly stylised campaign was a failure.

Feedback showed customers did not click into the "Knowledge makes the difference" tagline, and pointed out the campaign did not tell them what services the bank offered.

Consumers also said the campaign elevated the bank to an unjustified importance in customers' lives.

Saatchi & Saatchi won the right to have another crack after a pitch based around doodled people.

Most of the creative will come out of Wellington but Mike Rebelo - enticed from Vietnam in 2002 to manage the capital's shop - moved to Sydney to head the account in Australia.

The "direct" advertising - work such as mail drops - remains with Lavender, which snaffled that side of the business from Saatchi & Saatchi in 2002.

The total cost for the campaign will be much higher than the Saatchi & Saatchi spending.

Saatchi & Saatchi's doodle-based idea kicked out other contestants in the long process, including Australian incumbent Singleton Ogilvy & Mather (after just a year with the account), The Campaign Palace, Young & Rubicam, Publicis Mojo, DDB, McCann-Erickson, as well as Clemenger BBDO because of conflict of interest.

The new advertising is set to music from the Charlie Brown cartoon series and is intended to convey the message that the bank listens and offers solutions to customer requests.

It is also intended to distance Westpac from its former name, WestpacTrust.

The bank's new icon is a hand-drawn lightbulb, designed to signify bright ideas and solutions.

It hopes the style - in stark contract to traditional banking advertising - will endear customers to Westpac's more basic new image.

The campaign was launched in Australia late last year but held off in New Zealand during Westpac's unsuccessful pitch for the National Bank.

It will start tomorrow with television, print, outdoor and inhouse advertising and is expected to last several years.