Citizens entered the New York City metro market in 2022, through an acquisition of HSBC’s east coast branches and New Jersey-based Investors Bank. As a part of our go-to-market strategy, in 2023, Citizens became the official bank of New York Road Runners (NYRR), the world’s premiere community running organization, and a foundation sponsor of the TCS New York City Marathon. To kick off this five-year partnership, we wanted to ensure a big presence at the TCS NYC Marathon in November 2023. The objective? Connect with the community and people of New York and build a strong and distinct brand in to drive brand awareness and engagement around our multi-year partnership..
As a part of our launch as a new partner for NYRR and the TCS NYC Marathon, our social media and content team created a social first, innovative, first-of-its-kind for a financial institution multi-channel social media live stream activation on the ground from our dedicated Citizens Cheer zone along the marathon route at mile 12 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It was important for us to keep the audience engaged and authentically connect to the community. We partnered with comedian Rachel Dratch (Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock) and native NYC actor Michael Rainey Jr. (Power, Orange is the New Black) to co-host the live stream with a goal of capturing the energy and essence of the New York City fans. TV writers from Late Night with Seth Meyers and VMA Awards were engaged to write segments and jokes.
Strategy & Tactics
- As a part of our social and content strategy to support the marathon, we executed an integrated, innovative and authentic multi-channel live stream around our new partnership with NYRR to continue to drive brand awareness and engagement bringing to life the energy, emotion and excitement surrounding the marathon while connecting with fans and spectators.
- Leveraged influencers with local ties to NY with notable familiarity/household recognition and reach across demographics as hosts for livestream.
- Developed engaging content by our own Citizens social media team for owned channels and partnered with livestream hosts to pre-promote the event to build hype and encourage local participation and viewership. Content included editorial work on citizensbank.com and paid social media ads.
- Led by our social media team, we worked as an integrated team to collaborate on the live stream execution including run of show, scripting, talent prep, site planning, risk and legal, production teams, and many more.
Execution:
Executing this live stream as a brand in the financial industry was truly groundbreaking amongst our peers. Our social and content team led the initiative as we were boots on the ground to make sure we executed flawlessly, whether we were getting releases signed for participation, running props, capturing footage, or monitoring every second from our command center at a local branch. It was a successful collaborative effort every step of the way working with our external NYRR partners, our public relations firm and production company to our internal marketing, security and risk and legal teams.
Once the enterprise social and content team received approval of our idea and concept from NYRR and leadership, it was off to the races to secure the right talent to host our live stream, given our connection to the marathon and NYC fans. This effort was developed, planned and executed in less than one month, which is a huge testament to the strength of the social and content team along with the power of collaboration to make sure we crossed the finish line in time for the marathon.
- Working within a short time frame, the social and content team worked diligently across our partners on script writing, setting up a cadence of pre-production meetings, setting up efficient approval processes, technology meetings, security meetings and developing our on the ground logistics while making sure we had approvals from senior leadership as we progressed.
- Our social and content team created a pre, during and post strategy to create content for the live stream. All assets were done in house by the social media team to support. Real time content capture and development occurred during the live stream with our social team on the ground.
- Day of execution included early morning arrivals, onsite meeting, staffing, live support and live production led by our social and content team in partnership with the production team, real time risk assessment in the command center and immediate post media buy done internally by our team.
The live stream aired on Citizens Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Tiktok channels between 11:30 am – 12:30 pm on November 5. Led by the Citizens social media and content team, this innovative experience was a collaborative effort across many teams internally, including the sponsorships, risk and legal, and marketing, and externally with our public relations and production partners. The activation pushed the limits of what a highly regulated business can do in order to market itself authentically. We were extremely proud of our results given this was the first time we executed a live stream in brand history.
Results
Total Views on Live Stream: 20,466
Total Views (live and sizzle through 12/31 with post-paid promotion): 677,454
