ING brand campaign makes its mark

By PAUL PANCKHURST


Financial services group ING is claiming a sevenfold increase in consumer awareness after the launch of a brand campaign by ad agency M&C Saatchi.

The company said it was one of the biggest international players in its market, but brand awareness in New Zealand had been "a significant challenge".

Marketing general manager Steven Giannoulis said: "This is the first major campaign for the company since we rebranded as ING two years ago."

The company "wanted to create a campaign that reflected the depth and size of ING worldwide, and to help people remember our name and what we do".

The campaign is built around the way memory works - with the aim of helping people to remember ING and some important facts about the company.

Each execution demonstrates something about the way memory works - like the storage capacity of short-term memory and the easiest-to-remember colours.

ING said tracking showed unprompted awareness increased seven times and prompted awareness doubled in the first two weeks after the launch of the TV campaign in July.

In addition, television and print campaign executions had the second highest unprompted recall for financial services companies.

M&C Saatchi group account director Philip O'Neill said: "The ads don't look like financial services advertising is expected to look.

"There are no successful people enjoying the trappings of their success anywhere in sight.

"It's a great example of how creativity and strategy can work better than simply throwing lots of money at an ordinary idea."

O'Neill said anecdotal evidence indicated strengthened support from independent financial advisers, the key distributors of ING products and services.