With over 200 years in existence and a mantra of doing what's right and smart, Eastern Bank's deep-rooted commitment to fighting for racial justice and equality has been apparent for centuries.
When systemic racism and wealth inequities were perpetually affecting the communities of color that we serve, we took action with our "Color & Capital for Good" campaign. Starting in 2019 under our brand-level Join Us For Good campaign, Color & Capital For Good sourced powerful commentary from influential members of Boston's Black and Latinx communities, along with Massachusetts' political and business leaders, on how Boston continually leaves these communities behind and what must be done to fix it.
In times of extreme political and social unrest, and in the midst of a pandemic that only magnified the systemic inequities in our city, we knew this work was more relevant and important than ever. As a financial services company whose mission is to do good things to help people prosper, we could not sit idly by as minority communities are continually shut out of wealth-building opportunities.
So our response was simple. We asked people to rally around Black and Latinx communities and Join Us For Good in working to close the racial wealth gap by:
Running a paid media campaign featuring prominent Black and Latinx voices
Hosting an event to discuss these inequities and action-oriented solutions
Creating a hub with deeper learnings, campaign participant content and event information
Circulating a pledge to actively advocate for minority-owned businesses and services
In order to be the most powerful – and most successful – at inspiring the Boston community to take action, we knew that the message must be told through the voices of Black and Latinx community members themselves. And that’s exactly what we did. Since the inception of this campaign back in 2019, our strategy was to directly partner with influential Black and Latinx Bostonians and amplify their voices. This campaign and culminating event launched in the midst of incredible political and social unrest in our country, which made the topic and work hyper-relevant to our audience. Here’s how we did it:
Think Human-First:
In 2019, we partnered with five influential entrepreneurs (3 Black and 2 Latinx) in Boston’s community. We interviewed each participant twice over the course of the year and elevated their voices through intimate conversations detailing their experience with the racial wealth gap, and proposed solutions to close it.
Produced thumb-stopping creative that featured eye-opening statistics surrounding the racial wealth gap, such as the racial disparity in household net worth in Boston and the lack of resources allocated to minority-owned businesses in the first Coronavirus Relief Bill.
Use A Mix of Media Tactics To Educate and Raise Awareness:
Clear calls to action across all campaign creative encouraged our audience to visit our landing page, sign up for our virtual event and engage with campaign content on site.
Hyper-targeted paid social and programmatic media reached an audience of Boston's Black and Latinx professionals
Organic social engaged our followers
Campaign participants shared the assets we created on their own channels to influence their own networks and communities
Long-form interview pieces dove deeper into each participant as well as included links to their respective business ventures in order to amplify their brands
Landing page also encouraged signatures on our pledge to support and stand with Black and Latinx communities
Host An Open Forum to Discuss and Propose Solutions:
Partnered with Bernadine Desanges and Jessicah Pierre as the event consultants, both of whom are Black entrepreneurs, to develop the event's agenda, panel discussion guide and moderate the event
Our campaign culminated in a virtual town hall, held on 6/22/20, which included opening remarks from the Mayor of Boston, and a panel discussion, featuring our five video participants and other influential Boston POC, discussing actionable pathways to closing Boston’s racial wealth gap
Pledge to Build A Better Boston:
Our pledge was hosted on a landing page, encouraging Boston community members to commit to 9 actions to help close the racial wealth gap
Going Beyond Our Campaign:
Helped secure over 8,000 Paycheck Protection Program Loans, totaling $1.2 Billion, for local businesses in need
In response to the upsurge in the racial justice movement, Eastern Bank CEO, Bob Rivers, publicly condemned all forms of racism and declared unapologetic, company-wide support for the BLM movement. Corresponding BLM creative ran not only on paid media channels but inside all branches, on highway billboards, employee Linked In backgrounds and email signatures.
Our movement educated, empowered and inspired Black and Latinx professionals to galvanize their communities and uplift one another for good and our commitment to raising awareness and having this important conversation has already paid off.
We've far exceeded previous campaign social benchmarks by over 300%. Additionally, our digital campaign has so far amounted to:
The campaign delivered over 9M impressions (paid + organic) resulting in over 4M video views and 47K engagements with our content. Over 11,500 users were driven to the website’s landing page, where they could register and interact with our campaign content, read more about the panelists and partners, and take action on behalf of this issue.
We also saw incredible responses in regards to our event registration and post-event content:
There were 295 total registrations for the live event, and 156 attendees joined live for a 52% attendance rate. Post event feedback was also successful. 87% of respondents rated the live event as either Excellent or Very Good and many attendees noted that the panel discussion was extremely relevant, with the moderators and parters driving a pointed, inclusive, inspiring and educational conversation. Our Event Recap video, despite less time in market, drove a significant engagement rate (6.6%), showing continued support from our organic audiences post-event.
We know that this work is far from over. These results, along with our mission to continue doing what's right and smart, means that we'll continue fighting until Boston's racial wealth gap is closed for good.
