Episode 158 - BNP Paribas Get A Flat Ad Reviewed by Thames Water, Share Creative and The Digital Voice
In BNP Paribas’ Get A Flat ad, rapper D.ACE uses TikTokers’ comments to criticise the “obstacle course” of getting a flat as a student in France. The case study chosen by Contagious is a really clever creative execution showing a bank trying to humanise its services and connect with Gen Z.
But does putting themselves in a new light actually disconnect BNP Paribas from their core brand identity? And did this ad drive business or just brand awareness? Our guests Virginia Barnes (Interim Director of Brand and Marketing at Thames Water), Nick Merry (Senior Creative at SHARE Creative), and Maryum Sheikh (PR and SEO Lead at The Digital Voice) weigh in.
Episode 158 - BNP Paribas Get A Flat Ad Reviewed by Thames Water, Share Creative and The Digital Voice
Transcript is automatically generated, so not perfect, but you get the idea!
Amy Wright 0:00
Welcome, everybody, to this week's Advertisers Watching Ads. The show where people who work in marketing talk about the work of other people who work in marketing.
My name is Amy Wright. I am the Global Head of Creative Strategy at Automated Creative, and we've got a fantastic new case study for you this week that has been selected by our partners at Contagious Magazine voted on by the AWA community online. I want to kick off with introducing our incredible panel of guests this week.
Virginia Barnes 0:49
Hello. My name is Virginia Barnes. I am Interim Brand Marketing Director at Thames Water.
Nick Merry 0:54
Hi, I'm Nick. I am a Senior Creative at Share Creative.
Maryum Sheikh 0:58
Hello, I'm Mary. I'm the Press Lead at The Digital Voice but have been in the advertising and marketing industry for around four to five years now.
Amy Wright 1:06
Fantastic. So let's get into it and watch this week's case study video.
Let's move to the vote. Marks out of five based on the evidence you've seen so far. Oh, we're going to go in three...
Nick Merry 2:43
Just on the campaign alone, I'm going four.
Amy Wright 2:46
Okay, so we've got two fours and a three. So this week our case study comes to you from BNP Paribas and it is called "Get A Flat" and it ran in France. So kicking off with kind of initial opinions on this. What was your kind of initial reaction when you watched the video?
Virginia Barnes 3:01
I think the creative execution of using customers' words to create the rap and putting it on TikTok is just really clever. It's really fresh. I think it's really interesting. I was chatting to a friend about this and apparently, it's to do with the fact that laws in France particularly, favor tenants, which is great, but it means that the quid pro quo of that is that landlords demand very high deposits upfront. So obviously as a young person, it makes it really difficult to try and find a new place to live because you have to find a huge bunch of money upfront.
Nick Merry 3:27
I think I really like it. This is ultimately is a bank that are really trying to show their human side and sort of targeting a really specific problem and a very specific group of people. I think these days banks tend to come across as sort of quite disconnected from their customers. BNP are trying to sort of understand their audience and their struggles and are really trying to help raise awareness of this, sort of wider economic issue and with these offers that they're offering.
Maryum Sheikh 3:50
So I loved the campaign. I loved how they leverage social media, especially TikTok. If they're targeting Gen Z and how they're addressing real issues. And it's a bank at the back and having a rapper make a song out of the comments... So I think it is really interesting to see how they're leveraging all the interest, anything that can engage Gen Z as a consumer.
Virginia Barnes 4:10
I do question whether BNP Paribas have the right to do this. It's trying too hard. Do they have the credibility to do this? Or does it appear a bit naff for them as a sort of well-known high street bank to be doing this and I genuinely don't know that. That's a cultural context question that I don't know the answer to.
Nick Merry 4:28
The whole campaign is supporting this, this deal that obviously helps the young people, but it's a wider, it's more of, sort of wider economic issue around are banks necessarily the right people to be... to be preaching this message when the crux of it they are causing part of this problem? With high interest rates and putting those difficulties in place. Yeah, for me, it felt like it almost would have been stronger coming from sort of a youth charity or... or an organization maybe doing a little bit more to help youth people. Obviously, the offer's great but could they maybe do a little bit more to, to help these people and these first time buyers?
Maryum Sheikh 5:01
It does sound a bit weird coming from a bank who are actually part of the problem as well. But I think according to Gen Z's perspective, I don't know what they, how would they take it? Like they'd see the bank as being really worried about them or like doing something that is actually solving a problem that they're facing. So might be aligned or keen towards them in an emotional way.
Amy Wright 5:27
Do we think it kind of makes light of quite a serious situation? I mean, what are your thoughts around that?
Virginia Barnes 5:32
I think it does. I think it laughs with the viewer at what is a very difficult situation. I think they get away with that because the lyrics of rap I guess, come from consumers. They're laughing at the situation. So I think the banks were allowed to use that language because it's borrowed from real people who are already talking about that themselves. My question is, did it deliver commercially? What was the return from this? Another question I have is that the offer I think is 20% off the deposit... So BNP Paribas will subsidize your deposit for a new place to live, which is great. But is that competitive? I don't know. Like is that a stand out product versus the market? You would have thought if you'd gone this hard on the execution. You want to make sure that that, that is significantly better than what your peers are doing, but you would hope so that they have a standout product to sit behind it sort of to back up this execution. But without it, it would be a bit style over substance.
Nick Merry 6:26
Looking at the case in particular is really interesting they don't necessarily reference any success of the product itself in that case study. At no point did they reference a drive in opening of new accounts or, or whatever it might be, which is quite an interesting point. Why isn't that there? A case study like that, you'd think they'd be sort of shouting about it. So maybe it necessary didn't quite hit the mark? The other point on that is whilst the comments are massively positive, it'd be interesting to go through and see just how many of them are strictly about BNP, and not necessarily the actual campaign execution. I think there's a couple at the end of the video. The very last comment on the case study is that, "I think I'm going to switch banks." Not that, "I have switched banks." "I think I'm going to switch banks." There's a couple of moments in the case study where they scrolled through the comments and it's... "This is great, this is brilliant." A lot of that is referenced in the execution, which is it's fantastic. But are they necessarily driving the results they need to and I mean, that comes down to the initial brief, the initial goal of BNP. They may not have been driving that. They may have purely done this from a brand awareness points. From that point of view, they've absolutely smashed it. They've done a really great job.
Maryum Sheikh 7:34
So I saw that the completion rate was like 17%, but I wondered what was the deliverables behind that? Was it just the new bank openings or what they're looking for. If it's brand awareness, yes, they've killed it. But I don't know how many people actually converted to make a new account in the bank or the whole program, or what solution are they providing even if they were raising awareness towards a problem but what's the solution?
Amy Wright 7:57
Obviously, this is a very, very targeted campaign. It sits very squarely on that kind of Gen Z, new to the market, actually, student-type audience. Why are they going after them in the first place?
Virginia Barnes 8:06
When I have worked on a little bit of banking in the past, in the UK-context, the student markets are always worth capturing because people don't switch that often. So if you can get people when they're young, they're more likely to stay with you. And obviously, hopefully students is a smart play because of who they become eventually. So that's why you would target them. But I think your question about how does targeting students impact their wider customer base and that's the thing with banks is that they have a very wide customer base, you know, they're for most people most of the time.
Maryum Sheikh 8:34
For the wider audience, it might be a point where they see that their bank is aligning with the real social issues in the society, even if they don't know what they're providing and what the solution is but they're doing something for them that might have like a positive impact. But I think it's true that they're targeting students because people only open accounts and then they never switch. So that's really interesting to see what effect, what perspective their wider audience will have.
Virginia Barnes 8:59
This is obviously high production value and it looks great, but you can't be smashing these out every couple of days. You know, so what's the plan? You know, you could invite people to share their stories like what they're doing and join in, participate in what's happening in your life or your struggles. Or they could have been more of a that sort of thing but make it so polished and perfect and like a high production-value piece of content is not going to get people UGC-ing back to it. There are lots of different ways this could still go. There's something in it that's really lovely. I just hope that they do more with it, you know?
Amy Wright 9:27
If I was to make you marketing director for the day, for BNP, would you sign off on the campaign in its current form? Would you put your money behind it? Oh... Thank you for everyone for watching this week's episode of Advertisers Watching Ads. Massive thank you to all of our guests this week and we will see you next week for our next episode. Thanks!
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