ANZ and TBWA\NZ on the inspiration behind ‘We do How’

Off the back of ANZ Bank NZ’s new brand platform ‘We do How’, StopPress chatted to Matt Pickering, General Manager Marketing at ANZ and Shane Bradnick, TBWANZ Chief Creative Officer on its backstory.

Matt Pickering, General Manager Marketing at ANZ

What inspired this campaign? 

From our research we could clearly see that New Zealanders want to improve their financial wellbeing, but often just don’t know where to start. We could also see that they sometimes find the communication from their bank a bit frustrating. People were wanting their banks to help them achieve their goals, rather than tell them what to do.

This was already our approach when it came to one-on-one communications, but we could see there was the opportunity to take this further. ‘We Do How’ announces ANZ’s  commitment to giving Kiwis the practical tools and know-how they need. It’s also why we’ve set up our Financial Wellbeing Programme, which is designed to give Kiwis the practical ‘hows’ (or solutions) to their ‘whys’, (the things they want to accomplish).

What made you want to launch a new brand platform now?

Financial Wellbeing is an ‘all of bank’ commitment for ANZ, which called for something bigger than a campaign. We know that financial wellbeing is important to New Zealanders, with almost 60 percent wanting to save or invest more for their future and 77 percent thinking they could do better with their money. The programme features a range of tips and tricks for people at various life stages and it’s freely available to everyone, not just ANZ customers.

What were some of the main challenges you were trying to overcome?

Our challenge was to create a communications platform that would help Kiwis understand and engage with the ANZ Financial Wellbeing Programme, as well as be entertaining and interesting in the first instance. Everything we did had to feel like a helpful ‘how’ from ANZ, without relying on just a logo or an end frame. The key to this was breathing life into our characters, while ensuring our products and services were central to the plotline, and not just an afterthought.

How does the campaign evolve over time?

The launch ad sets up our new brand platform with the idea that ‘if you have a why, we have the how’. It introduces us to a modern Kiwi family, the Sharmas, and we see how ANZ helps them get to their ‘whys’.

It’s followed by a suite of ads featuring the family, each demonstrating how all Kiwis can embark on their own journey to financial wellbeing – including how to make a start, how to set a savings goal, and even how to pay off your home loan faster.

Shane Bradnick, TBWANZ Chief Creative Officer 

What was the brief?

ANZ wanted to be known as the bank that’s here to improve Kiwis’ financial wellbeing. It’s a huge ambition, and it needed a core idea that was simple, yet profound enough to match that. Instead of seeing this as a single campaign, it meant taking a holistic ‘all of bank’ approach to see how we could make a difference to people’s lives across all their products and services.

What was the trickiest part of delivering it?  

We knew we had landed on a powerful platform idea with ‘We Do How’. The challenge was to land the message in a way that resonates with New Zealanders on a human level. ‘How’ can seem functional on the surface, but we wanted people to connect with the emotional power behind it.

That’s how we got to ‘if you have a why, we have the how’. The ‘why’ helped us connect on an emotional level and enabled us to tell a very human story – which elevated the difference that a ‘how’ can make to people’s lives.

What inspired the storytelling and the casting?

ANZ is the nation’s biggest bank and we wanted the brand work to tell a story of New Zealand’s cultural diversity, which is why we chose a mixed Indian/Kiwi family.

There’s also a real story behind the story. It’s inspired by our Creative Director, Ashwin Gopal. Born and raised in New Delhi, Ashwin studied advertising before moving to New Zealand at 21. An avid Indian cricket fan, Ashwin now has a Kiwi wife and two young children and believes that everything in his life has led him to this campaign. His mother-in-law is a diehard BLACKCAPS fan, which gave him the insight that no matter how much of a Kiwi he’d become, he’d always be an Indian cricket fan. So, he asked himself, what would make him give up his Indian cricket fanhood? And the story began of Ravi and his son Sameer.

Creating emotionally engaging work for finance brands without being cliché can be a challenge. What are your thoughts on this?  

Any campaign focused only on the financial aspect will always struggle to engage without the human aspect.

The key learning for us was harnessing the power of sponsorship and connecting that straight to the heart of the ANZ brand. Cricket and the deep cultural connection that New Zealanders have to sport was a key lever we were able to pull to really connect with our audience. It helped us to present ANZ as not just a financial institution but as a valued member of the community.

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