Finance can be a great industry to market for, with opportunities for huge campaigns and some fascinating data to focus on. At Rise at Seven, we love finding creative ways to put finance brands in the centre of the conversation - and we love seeing other people do this, too. So much so that we’ve compiled a list of our ten favourite finance campaigns we’ve ever seen, including PR, social media and creative campaigns. Time to get inspired.

Disclaimer: we’ve featured some of our own campaigns here, as well as others’.

1.ATOM BANK - DESIGN YOUR OWN LOGO

In 2016, mobile-only bank Atom Bank firmly believed ‘no one should have exactly the same experience’ by giving customers an opportunity to design their own unique logo. The bank’s actual logo consists of three shapes, but they gave customers a choice of 15 shapes to play with, opening up a possible 1.4 million combinations, as well as letting customers rename the bank if they desired. Welcome to MitchandHugo’s bank.

2. WESTERN UNION - AMERICAN DREAM SWEEPSTAKES

Ah the good old ‘American Dream’. Western Union and agency Quirk Creative wanted to help people's dreams come true with their ‘American Dream Sweepstakes’ in 2015. The campaign itself was simple; a competition for their customers to win over $180,000 worth of cash prizes to put towards their dream. Customers could enter by just making a qualifying transfer or a no purchase necessary mail-in entry. Towards the end of the campaign, they profiled three winners showing what they did with their prize and how it improved their lives. With 13 million entries and 1.2 million unique clicks to the website, which resulted in a record number of app registrations, we’d say this was a success. In fact, it’s their most successful campaign to date. The campaign also managed to change brand perception, with 75% of viewers saying they felt differently about WU. Dream on.

3. HOME EQUITY BANK - CATCH THE SCAM

Dicaprio, Hanks, we’ve all seen the movie… but did you know that Catch Me If You Can is based on  real-life con man Frank Abagnale? Agency Zulu Alpha Kilo and HEB brought him in for a masterclass on how to avoid scams in the modern day. Each masterclass was a video of Frank explaining how he would scam his victims and then a lesson on how to avoid being scammed yourself - all very insightful and important for a bank with a customer base of 55+. The campaign was a social only activation, focused on Youtube (1.2 million views) and Facebook (800k views) which performed incredibly well,  delivering over 35 million media impressions. It was picked up by the likes of Yahoo, Adweek, Campaign and won multiple awards such as Atomic Bronze and The Drum Awards for digital industries.

4. UPSLIDE - FORTUNE 500 HAPPINESS

We can’t believe we’re this far into a blog about finance campaigns without mentioning the stock exchange… Well, here it is. We ran a campaign for Upslide, all about how happy staff at Fortune 500 companies actually are. Ok, so Upslide aren’t technically a finance company, but their customer base are in the sector, so we knew the campaign needed a strong hook to pique their interest. The study analysed which companies had the best maternity and paternity policies, the most favoured CEO and overall work culture based on Glassdoor reviews. The campaign landed in top tier US publications such as USA Today and Business Insider. This achieved 20 links, 5k social shares and 10k sight visits overall.

5. NATWEST - GAMING IN LOCKDOWN

Just over two years ago, we were in the early stages of lockdown, bingeing Tiger King, making banana bread and going on our daily walks. It was a strange time for us all, particularly children who were dialling into lessons on Zoom from their bedrooms. Natwest bank recognised this, and with the help of Zenith Media, reached out to children by creating ‘Island Saver’, a game which aids financial education by allowing kids to accumulate islands based on saving points that they earned. More points = more islands. Simple. The launch was in-line with their ‘Moneysense In Schools’ programme, and proved to be an even bigger hit than initially predicted. The campaign received over two million downloads and resulted in ‘kids bank account’ queries being in 5 of the top 10 searches on Natwest’s product pages in 2020.

6. MONEY.CO.UK - HEALTHIEST PLACES TO LIVE

Where is the healthiest place to live, you ask? Well, thanks to Money.co.uk, we have the answer! Money wanted new referring domains from relevant and high-authority publications worldwide, so we created a global index using a variety of factors to determine the healthiest places to live around the world. Picking up over 41,000 page visits and 144 links, it became the highest ever performing campaign for Money.co.uk, and reached over 23 countries with an impressive 33.9k social engagements. We’ll see you all in Valencia.

7. LLOYDS BANK - CROSSWORD CLUES

Until now, mobile banking apps have appealed to a much younger audience, rather than the older affluent customer, with this older customer often fearing the technology. Lloyds Bank wanted to solve this issue and retain their older customer base, while taking more and more services online. They worked with Mediacom to produce a well thought out campaign involving their target market’s favourite puzzle, the humble crossword, in their favourite paper, The Daily Telegraph.  Lloyds placed cryptic crossword-style tactical print ads, written by the paper’s editorial team, below the daily crossword to drive awareness of their mobile app. The campaign was effective - after seeing the ad, 56% of readers visited the Lloyds Bank website, and 51% chose to learn more about the features. Crucially, 44% used or downloaded the app. It won the Special Chair Award and the Best Use of Insight category at the 2021 Newsworks Planning Awards. (1, Up)

8. WEPAY-  ICE BLOCK

Sometimes the best way to promote yourself is by poking fun at others, and all you need to do that is a lot of money, and a lot of ice. Yes, you read that right. That’s exactly what WePay did in 2010 to take on tech giant rivals, PayPal. At PayPal’s annual development conference in San Francisco, WePay froze a ton of cash and an ice-cold burn directed at PayPal’s recent account freeze issues, encouraging customers to ‘unfreeze’ their money with WePay. Less than 2 hours later, the stunt had made the front page of TechCrunch and the results were even more impressive. WePay saw a 300% increase in weekly traffic as well as a 225% increase in signups. The stunt also had a landing page named UnfreezeYourMoney.com, which meant they were able to track page conversions at a rate of 3x higher than normal. A great all-round icy campaign.

9. ASKTRADERS - THE UK’S MOST DECLINING HIGH STREET

Sometimes all you need to do is AskTraders, and when they approached us asking for some high quality backlinks, we gave them exactly what they were looking for. By utilising open data, we created an industry report focussed on the decline of the beloved UK highstreet, which we then broke down further to show which 20 high street towns in the UK were struggling the most, and which 20 had the most thriving high-street. A simple blog post style report received over 90 links on national, regional and retail publications, even sparking debate over local radio. It also generated an increase in organic traffic by 329% and 53% increase in search visibility. This campaign directly contributed to AskTraders becoming the go-to authority on financial information - and to top it all off, a UK Content Awards Winner 2020. 

10. CASHLADY - EVERY COUNTRY’S FAVOURITE SUPERHERO MOVIE

Sometimes, data is so intriguing and popular that it doesn’t actually need to be about finance to do well. Which is exactly what Cashlady realised when they released their index of every country's favourite superhero movie. Using simple data gathered from Ahrefs, Cashlady created an easy-to-read world map containing each nation’s most beloved film. 106 links and a whole load of international press later, Cashlady saw positive growth in website performance. A nice simple campaign that fed people’s natural intrigue and (spidey) senses.

CREATING A GREAT FINANCE CAMPAIGN

The best finance campaigns are those that are able to spark interest in what’s largely perceived as a ‘boring’ industry (not by us!). There’s a huge amount of opportunity in the space - and we can’t wait to see what comes next. From sustainability to crypto, there are some exciting new themes to focus on, so we’re sure it won’t be long until we’re adding to this list.

Like this blog? See what we think are 16 of the best gaming and entertainment campaigns in the industry.