When you think advertising and financial services brands, ho-hum bill stuffers and snoozy direct mailers may spring to mind. But to reach a notoriously advertising-averse target (like American millennials), sometimes the mold has to be broken. Or completely smashed to bits.
Our challenge was to promote Bank of America as the right partner for millennials to turn to for financial content that is relevant to them—right now. It had to be engaging and authentic, not condescending or preachy, for them to connect with our message.
And so "Better Money Habits" on Pinterest was born, but we were clearly up against the naysayers:
"Experiments with Pinterest in Retail Banking Fail Miserably"
TheFinancialBrand.com
"Banks and Pinterest go together like lamb and tuna fish."
Zachary Ehrlich, MyBankTracker.com
This wildly popular social channel was the perfect place to initiate an honest conversation with millennials about money. What's more, our content strategy mapped perfectly to existing Pinterest behaviors—like planning around pivotal life events (new baby, new house, travel, etc.) We created boards that aligned with the most frequently pinned topics and created relevant pins for users to digest and share.
In Q4 of 2014, we ranked 2nd among Pinterest's 50 paid beta partners—a major feat for a financial brand on the platform. The Better Money Habits page is outperforming lifestyle brands and beating Pinterest's beta engagement benchmarks by 2x.
So move over mailers. Turns out that money and social media do mix.
While many have questioned the business case for a financial services brand to align itself with a channel bursting with carefully curated images of couture bridal gowns and gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches, we knew there was a way to win in Pinterest. We just had to do it right.
Baby boomers and Gen Xers may still be a captive audience when it comes to traditional media, but millennials are consuming information in ways their parents never did. In fact, many seem borderline blasé about how easy it is to access an entire universe of information with just a few taps on a screen.
To say social and mobile media are blowing up is an understatement. Social media is the #1 source of referral traffic to content on the web, and 71% of millennials visit social sites every single day. Along with that, 18-to-34-year-olds spend an average of five hours on their phones daily. It all adds up to one giant opportunity.
So what did we do? We made creative that felt like it belonged.
Combining beautiful design with jump-off-the-page copy, our pins didn't advertise—they told stories. They blended insight with aesthetics for some pretty impressive results. We identified important life-planning behaviors inherent to the Pinterest platform (where our message would resonate) and created content that was additive—not interruptive—to the experience.
Within two weeks of launching paid media, we were one of Pinterest's top 5 promoted content partners. And we sustained this momentum, with our content consistently performing in the top 5 (as high as top 2!), outperforming brand powerhouses that dominated the platform. We continue to outperform Pinterest's beta engagement benchmarks by 2X, beating lifestyle brands in the space, and have driven more than 26,000 repins to date. Our pins have also been featured in the New York Times and Ad Age—and this is just the beginning for our channel.
Maybe lamb and tuna are better together than we thought.
Sources:
1 http://www.mybanktracker.com/news/2012/05/14/banks-pinterest-lamb-tuna-fish/
2 http://thefinancialbrand.com/27303/pinterest-fails-banks-and-credit-unions/
3 The Digital Consumer Report, 2014 (Nielsen)
