Inside CommBank and the CAN campaign
It is nearly two years since Toni Collette appeared on Australian televisions and read the minute-long Ode to CAN, signalling the repositioning of one of Australia’s oldest and largest institutions. Nic Christensen sat down with CMO Vittoria Shortt and her team to talk about the CAN campaign, how it has changed the bank and how much longer it can run.
Could three simple letters: CAN redefine the perception of a bank in the minds of Australian consumers?
This was the question the Commonwealth Bank, as well as much of the marketing industry, was asking itself amid the post GFC climate of 2012 that had badly dented consumer confidence, particularly in the banking sector. CAN as an idea and campaign, was led by new creative agency M&C Saatchi who had won the prestigious account back from US-based agency Goodby Silverstein, but it was not without risks.
As The Australian’s then marketing writer Simon Canning noted at the time: “‘CAN’ borders dangerously on being a motherhood statement. Members of the public do not want to be told how to live their lives by a gigantic financial institution.
I’m not sure if customer satisfaction is really driven by brand campaigns.
No kidding Stevo… That is a ridiculous suggestion. Surely that came from the mouth of someone in marketing at Comm bank?
But as Vittoria Shortt says Can is much more than just another advertising campaign, it’s internal as much as external with better customer satisfaction one of the outcomes.
Brand campaigns definitely don’t drive customer satisfaction but somehow every CMO in the big banks have managed to convince their board and leadership teams that cust sat rankings and nps is what their bonuses are based on.
Campaigns don’t directly drive customer satisfaction. But campaigns that establish a brand promise that a business actually lives up to certainly help. This post made the call a year a go on the relationship between the ‘Can’ campaign and Commbank’s satisfaction rating: http://brandtruth.com.au/2013/.....isfaction/
Follow the link in it for more on why brand authenticity is critical for customer satisfaction.
Commbank would be mad to walk away from that campaign. It has years of longevity in it…
There was always something so eighties about this lazy campaign idea. You feel nothing when you look at it – it’s so far behind where people are at. Piss it off.
Which bank?
It depends on what area of a brand you focus on. If you take Employer brand, focus the troops and manage to get them embracing “can” and this has a massive effect on service levels for clients, then hey presto…
It would appear that CBA’s different departments (service, sales, marketing, recruitment, HR, finance) speak to each other and are encouraged to do so. Rolling out a campaign that touches employees as much as the customer is the way to go. it certainly appears that CBA are trying and perhaps might have achieved this.
I know some awesome developers who traditionally worked for ‘tech’ companies, now working over at CBA. the culture rocks, they are looking forward and the business, again appears to be aligned…
(For the record, I have never worked, consulted, nor have any affiliation with CBA, other than understanding that this campaign embraces the CBA culture…)