News

NAB escalates war on its rivals with video stunts

NAB has escalated its aggressive attack on rivals by uploading a series of videos of what it claims are prank ambushes on the staff of CommBank, ANZ and Westpac.

The CommBank stunt sees singers present a cake to a table of what it suggests are CommBank staff enjoying a “long lunch”.  

However, Mumbrella understands that those featured in the videos are not really rival bank staff.

A spokesman for CommBank told Mumbrella: “We do not participate in ads for our rivals.”

The video attacking ANZ features its execs apparently enjoying a lunchtime cruise.

And the Westpac video features a board meeting apparently being interrupted via a window cleaning cradle.

Meanwhile, another front of the war is taking place in print advertising, with Australia’s newspaper publishers a major beneficiary. Today’s metro and newspapers see a full page ad created for NAB by Clemenger BBDO Melbourne written as a breakup note to its rivals.

Most papers also contain a DPS ad by Lavender promoting Westpac’s discounted home loan.

The NAB print ads are the latest stage in the bank’s camppaign which kicked off with a Twitter breakup stunt on Friday night, followed by a PR offensive over the weekend.

nab_breakup_ad

The long copy ads accuse CommBank, ANZ and Westpac of failing to be there for Australian businesses during the GFC.

The campaign also features a series of breakup videos which have started to appear on NAB’s YouTube channel. They feature actors appearing to loudly break up with each other in public places across Australia. These stunts took place in restaurants across Australia as customers celebrated Valentine’s Day.

There is also a NAB website called The Break Up.

The NAB campaign also stretches to outdoor, radio, mobile billboards, street teams, street chalking and helicopter banners.

As well as Clems, other agencies involved include PR agency Bang and media agency Zenith Optimedia.

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