Money Talks When Goals are Exceeded

This newly formed tri-state bank rebranded and renamed four years ago, after merging 2 long-standing locally reputed banks with each having nearly 135 years of history. The new bank has dozens of locations, more than 300 employees and assets in the billions.

For the first two years,, the bank chose to utilize in-house marketing services to create new advertising strategies and media placements, believing that their own staff would accelerate the media buying process, save time and limit expenses. While this was their intent, it was not the result. The bank suffered from stagnant growth and struggled internally to strategically design successful media campaigns.

Realizing the in-house staff maybe missing the mark, over the next two years, the bank hired two separate outside agencies that specialized in the financial sector. Four years after the merger, the bank thought it would be best to evaluate their advertising and rebranding efforts by contracting a well-known consumer research firm. The research firm analyzed several issues, but focused their attention on name recognition. Unfortunately, the results revealed nearly zero name recognition amongst the bank’s demographic, and the existing marketing team was disbanded.

The Client then approached A3 Media and challenged them to bring their unique planning and negotiating methodologies of Micro Market Media® to elevate brand awareness.

Goals:

• Build trust with A3’s recommendations, suggesting
  an entirely new media mix and believing A3’s vigilant
  Micro Market Media® tactics would elevate their
  voice and result in significant budget savings.
• To create strong name recognition across the bank’s
  footprint in less than 6 months.

• The newly created marketing team had
  already predetermined the media landscape
  selections available to A3, based on prior
  agency recommendations. A few segments were
  grandfathered in as “‘must haves”.
• A3 inherited a 30% reduction in budget from the
  previous year.
• Cost efficiencies moving forward would be difficult
  across some of the desired mediums such as cable,
  OOH and TV due to heavy federal and state political
  seasons that year.

Using in-house and third-party data, along with trademarked tools of Micro Market Media®, A3 dramatically altered the previous media selections, across a wide variety of media landscapes, which included many new mediums such as over-the-top, and connected TV ad placements.

A3 cut print by 70%. For this initial campaign radio, and several digital outlets previously used were completely abandoned, and replaced with more current platforms. An approportionate overlapping blend of highly concentrated digital, audio, mobile, and out of home were positioned to work in conjunction with targeted cable networks, OTT & connected TV properties. The ebb and flow of the engagement levels, and media tools were determined based on seasonality for each outlet, consumer behaviors, and political spending interests.

Reconfiguring the media strategy resulted in A3 surpassing the two previous agencies’ media goals by more than 100%. A3 even exceeded their own initial media goals, with an even smaller budget than its predecessors. The final negotiated media mix supplied a higher quality of impression placements, and 30% higher impression levels, while spending 31% less. Specifically, TV saw a 4% decrease in budget and a 17% impression increase. OOH experienced a savings of 36% while adding an additional 50% more quality panels, and board months. Digital was increased by 24%, OTT and CTV were utilized and mobile was increased by nearly 57%.

Provided the Client enough substantial savings to cover elements
such as print, out of home production, creative fees, and other
advertising expenses not originally predicted.