According to Bank of America’s 2022 Women & Minority Business Owner Spotlight, 59% of women business owners say they have to work harder for the same level of success as men. With this knowledge in mind, Bank of America and Seneca Women joined forces to create the Bank of America Marketplace by Seneca Women – a directory home to nearly 150 women-owned businesses spanning various industries, from food to skincare to fitness located in countries across the world.
As noted, women business owners do not feel that they are on a level playing field with men. Through a range of initiatives, Bank of America has extended support to women entrepreneurs by providing access to education, funding and now, access to markets. All these efforts are geared towards fostering a more equitable economic environment. The core objective of our social campaign was to generate awareness of the launch of the Marketplace and encourage our audience to make a purchase.
During an in-person leadership meeting, Bank of America hosted several businesses in a pop-up event, allowing them to make in-person sales, tell their stories and network with teammates. With our social media team on-site at the event, we conducted interviews with select women entrepreneurs, documenting their journeys, passions, and experiences as part of the Marketplace. The team came prepared with questions for specific vendors, proposed storyboards of what the final social assets should look like and a production crew. The content captured was utilized to create a dynamic sizzle reel featuring entrepreneurs discussing the impact of being part of the Marketplace, which launched on International Women’s Day. In under one minute, we created a compelling narrative that launched the Marketplace, highlighted the women’s stories and positioned the platform as a shoppable tool.
While preparing for this event, we encountered a few challenges. The plans all came together swiftly due to receiving the go-ahead for this activation less than five business days before the event. In that time, we vetted the on-site vendors, created pre-seeded questions and developed visual concepts of what we wanted the final product to look like. We assembled a production team, prepped our creative team and were off to the shoot. During the activation, we had to navigate the event’s schedule, noisy conference room sounds and non-stop background music playing in our filming areas. Our film crew ran around speaking with staff to politely ask them to lower their voices during filming and to pinpoint the source of the lobby’s background music to turn it off.
Despite these obstacles, we successfully captured interview content with multiple women business owners amplifying their stories and letting their dreams be heard.
Our efforts to publicize and announce the launch of the Bank of America Marketplace by Seneca Women was a success. We shared content across all of Bank of America’s channels including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Instagram Stories. Each piece of content performed at or above benchmarks with the LinkedIn post earning a nearly 46% engagement rate, far surpassing its 28% engagement rate benchmark.
We launched this content on International Women’s Day to also bring home the message of women’s empowerment, building equity and increasing access to markets for women business owners.
