NAB – brave, ambitious and aggressive

love it. a bank actually showing some originality. heck – ANYONE showing some originality these days is a surprise!!!

errrr…in the print ads they’re admitting collusion with the other banks so it could be a PR fail

It just keeps getting better. Impressive stuff! Creativity…always so nice to see where you least expect it.

Yes, I like the boldness of it. I just hope the product supports the hype.

@tim “But as the campaign continues to unfold, my jaw continues to drop” couldn’t agree more!

@KA Same!

I have to agree Tim. I am a little awestruck by the scale of the attack (it is everywhere), and it’s boldness (its bloody brave to pick a fight this big).

Well done to all involved – particularly the brave client.

Yes, hats off. Big plums.

any estimates on how much it would have cost?

Good on them for being provocative. Of course they would have anticipated the cynical response from many quarters, but at least it’s cutting through and challenging people and their competitors to think differently or respond. They took a lead with their products last year, maybe now their advertising has at least caught up.

i love this because if a bank can be this bold- then anyone can (and should).

What rules? What sensitivities?

That said, it’s still a bank, and maybe you can’t out lipstick on a pig.

But if you’re gonna have a crack- then go all in!

A great concept and thought out attack! Good work to the agency responsibile for all of this talk!

Hats off indeed to NAB and big ups to Cameron Clyne and his team who have shown the requistie plums to launch this attack.

Good to see that its not just rhetoric and hype for a change.

They acted first to get their products in order, made it a strategic pilar to become more customer focussed and then started the sell.

This is the right way to go about it.

A big win in my humble view and I expect they will get the results this sort of bravery deserves.

very good indeed, great use of media

Wolves in sheeps clothing? – according to Ross Greenwood, none of the four big banks have a top 5 product in home loans and credit cards – I reckon this is about posturing in the face of the fed govt statements of late, not about any real customer focus

Any advert that gets the public talking is successful. There was news stories about the whole campaign. I believe that if people are talking then the brand is out there. Its like the old flash mob wether you like it or not it gets you talking!

Hats off to Zenith Opti and also Clemenger for what looks like a sensational campaign. It is everywhere and they seem to have nailed it from every angle. Sure it would have taken a lot of hard work and team effort to pull this off!
For the flack that ZO have copped about PHD taking the nab business, it seems as though they have made a pretty big statement with this campaign about what they are capable of. Credit where credits due!

Hate it – am an NAB customer. It feels smug, fake and cringeworthy. It’s the creative not the execution that gets me – feel the need to avert my eyes when ever I encounter this campaign.

It’s quality. Cuts through. Something your parents would remark on. Well done them.

They’ve thrown their first punch [a bloody big one] and the leather just keeps on coming. But then again, George Foreman made a lot of contact early on in the Rumble in The Jungle and look what happened to him. So, let’s just wait and see before we rush to judgement..They could end up champs, or just as easily end up chumps. Only time will tell.

Re – my previous reference to the Rumble in the Jungle, I recommend you read ‘Hunter NAB becomes hunted in bank wars’ in the business section of the Saturday’s Australian.

Brave. Ambitious.Calm down Tim. You know as well as I, the easiest way for Sir Humphrey to put an end to one of the PM’s ideas was to simply say, “Brave/courageous decision Prime Minister”. NAB may very well win something out of this battle. [They’re entitled to claim a victory here and there just for being ‘brave/courageous’ enough to ‘take ’em on’]. But, this is not a battle that will be won by advertising. This will be won with products and services and NAB haven’t got much to say at present other than we’ll pay your switching fees. In yesterday’s Daily Telegraph there was an article on the bank battle and it stated that NAB have the most unhappy business customers of any bank. This was opposite a Westpac ad aimed straight at NAB business customers.Then there’s the CommBank directly targeting NAB home loan customers with some pretty attractive incentives to dump the NAB and switch to them. Add to that that the revelation in Saturday’s Australian that NAB still requires customers to pay breaking-up fees on 35 of their 40 home loans. Ouch! A few more articles like that and all the upside from your advertising goes straight out the window. No brand wants to be fighting battles on different fronts against bigger competitors. But that’s exactly what’s happening to NAB now. They’re fighting CommBank [and Westpac] on home loans and Westpac for their business customers.The scary bit for NAB management is that if they lose, they could end up with a lot less than they started out with. It reminds me of something another old hack was want to say about brands battling it out, “It’s not much use going into a gun battle carrying a knife”. Only time will tell.

What a fabulous brave client to be willing to state their differentiation from a mountaintop. I can’t count the number of times a client has briefed me to create an ad around such a bold claim, then pulled out from fear of retaliation.
Well done NAB. Hopefully other clients will admire their bravery too.

I continue to be amazed at the congratulatory fervour amongst the ad company types in this forum. Maybe I shouldn’t be – as the campaign is certainly different, bold for the sector and everywhere. But so what? Campaigns should form a logical and supportive role for a broader, intelligent marketing strategy. We’re yet to see the real results, but the results so far:

– a growing disbelief by existing NAB customers who know the claims are mostly baseless. Potential churn by those customers, and WOM that negates the campaign’s message.
– an aggressive price war that will see net interest margins hit and acquisition costs increase (CBA’s offer to pay break fees).

Nice for consumers – but from a NAB marketing strategy perspective a highly questionable, and potentially disasterous play. Perhaps the architect of this campaign should keep in mind what happened to the ANZ marketing exec who conceived the shitty Barbara campaign – oh that’s right: fired.

But is this campaign successful? That won’t be known for weeks or months.

In other words, will this campaign net NAB more customers/revenue?

If not, it’s a waste of time and money.

In today’s Australian, under the headline ‘Strategists at NAB win first round in war’ NAB CEO Cameron Clyne claims all’s going according to plan with their ‘breaking up’ campaign. His comments are revealing. But are they more self-serving? Only time will tell.

See NAB is claiming the breaking-up campaign has had 11 x more online hits than any previous campaign. Now we wait to see if that’s translates to sales. Good result on face value.

@Hack – it’s all the existing NAB customers wondering ‘WTF’?

Dear CA unimpressed.
You may be right, but time will tell [as will the official data]. What’s your prediction?

@old hack – you’re right of course, time will tell. I’m a NAB customer and can tell you not much has changed. However from a marketing professional perspective, I come back to the bigger questions concerning this campaign as a strategy that will ultimately add value to the company. It would be interesting to see the ROMI on this – i.e. not just be impressed by a spike in site visits which you’d expect with the kind of media spend, but considering the discounting response by the competitors and balancing out the net churn value, whether it’s been an effective strategy.

Coming back to core brand management principles – its a short road if your brand talks one talk, but walks an entirely different one – i.e. if customers realise that its mostly marketing BS and not real, valuable underlying differentiation that’s been created, then I suspect their ROMI calcs will suddenly appear less attractive.