CAUSE MARKETING
Photo courtesy of Fifth Third Bancorp.
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Fully Engaged Fifth Third Bancorp launched a cause marketing campaign to help unemployed customers find work—and to bolster the bank’s brand perception in the process BY CHRISTINE BIRKNER | SENIOR STAFF WRITER
cbirkner@ama.org Goal The Great Recession shattered many financial institutions’ reputations. Seven years later, many Wall Street banks are still being slapped with fines for wrongdoings while many other banks are still struggling to earn back customers’ trust. While it emerged from the recession with its reputation and business intact, Cincinnati-based Fifth Third
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Bancorp recently wanted to bolster its brand perception and boost customer engagement by embarking on a cause marketing initiative in line with the company’s long history of charitable community involvement. Action Community engagement and charitable work are integral to Fifth Third’s business
and brand identity. According to the company, Fifth Third launched its first cause-related effort in 1948 when it formed a charitable foundation. In 2012, Fifth Third expanded its communitybased work to address another pressing societal issue in the United States: unemployment. The company identified mortgage customers who were behind on their payments because they’d lost their jobs (customers either called bank representatives to let them know, or the bank learned about customers’ unemployment during normal business communications). Fifth Third partnered with NextJob, a Bend, Ore.-based re-employment solutions company, to offer these customers NextJob services, including webinars, job coaching and an online training program called the Job Seeker’s Toolkit. The bank contacted the
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CAUSE MARKETING
customers about the offer through letters delivered via overnight mail. After six months, nearly 40% of those participants landed jobs, and in 2013, Fifth Third extended the program to all of its online customers, publicizing the offer through media relations and via notices on the authenticated portion of 53.com (the part of the site that customers see after they log in to access their banking accounts).
with the number 53 referencing the company’s 5/3 logo, featuring photos and profiles of job seekers, and short, documentary-style videos of four job seekers sharing their life stories. Each video ends with a link to the job seeker’s LinkedIn profile, encouraging viewers to share the profile with their own social networks and expand the job seeker’s reach with potential employers. The job seekers in the videos were already
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Cincinnati CAMPAIGN TIMELINE
May 29 to July 10, 2014 RESULTS
Seven job seekers found employment as a result of the campaign (four during the campaign period). Campaign videos garnered 5,000 retweets; website received 100,000 views; and posts on Facebook and Twitter as well as display advertising and online video drove more than 44,000 total shares. Fifth Third’s Facebook “likes” increased by 85%, from 61,000 to more than 112,850.
“[Unemployment] may not be in the headlines as much as it was during the Great Recession, but certainly, it’s still an important issue,” says Maria Veltre, Fifth Third’s CMO. “Our own clients were potentially at risk of losing their homes due to unemployment. We didn’t want them to lose their homes.” In 2014, Fifth Third teamed up with Chicago-based advertising agency Leo Burnett Worldwide Inc. to create Reemployment, a cause marketing campaign that highlighted the bank’s efforts. “We’d been working with clients to help them find employment, so [the idea was] to take that program that we had in place and try to accelerate it and make it more visible,” Veltre says. The campaign, which launched on May 29, 2014, and ended on July 10, included a microsite, 53.com/reemploy,
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receiving NextJob coaching services, paid for by Fifth Third. Beyond the campaign microsite, the videos also ran on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. To add more promotional power to the effort, the team ran radio ads featuring job seekers’ stories on Pandora and traditional radio stations. “As eager as people are to find a job, they’re not always so eager to put their name and face and story out there in a public venue,” Veltre says. “We had to go through that process of identifying people who were brave enough to raise their hands and say, ‘I’d love to do this to help myself and to help others like me.’ ” One video shows Randall Jackson landscaping his yard on the South Side of Chicago. A voiceover features him
discussing his life in the neighborhood and his networking efforts for new job opportunities. “Randall got a job right as we launched [the ads], which was awesome. They let us into their lives and that’s a really important piece. You saw who they were as people, and we appreciated their ability to open up about that,” Veltre says. According to Louis Slotkin, an executive vice president and account director at Leo Burnett who worked on the Fifth Third effort, “There’s nothing like seeing a candidate on film and allowing them to talk straight to the camera and say: ‘Here’s my story. Here are my qualifications. Can you help?’ ” The campaign ran primarily online to make it easier for people to help the job seekers via social media, Slotkin says. “It was a quick step from seeing the video to sharing it on Facebook or retweeting it. It was a direct connect for the consumers that made it super simple to help.” Moreover, for every 53 retweets of these videos, Fifth Third funded a job-search coaching package for an unemployed person who received the help whether or not he or she was a Fifth Third customer. “The goal of the campaign was to help these people in the ads find employment, and to help more people find employment, in general,” Veltre says. Results Seven job seekers featured on the Reemployment website found employment as a result of the campaign (four during the campaign period). The three job seekers from the ads who are still unemployed are making more connections on LinkedIn as a result of the campaign, according to Veltre. One of the job seekers, Bill Laakkonen, was contacted directly because of his story from the radio ad. “Somebody heard the Pandora ad and they contacted him. It’s unbelievable when you have a message that can break through,” Veltre says. “It’s a marketer’s dream to hear that someone heard a radio spot and said, ‘I’m going to go find this guy, Bill.’ ”
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CAUSE MARKETING
During the campaign’s six-week run, the videos garnered 5,000 retweets and Fifth Third funded 53 job-search coaching packages. According to Veltre, the Reemployment website received 100,000 views, and posts on Facebook and Twitter as well as display advertising and online video drove more than 44,000 total shares. Fifth Third’s Facebook “likes” increased by 85%, from 61,000 to more than 112,850. Veltre and Slotkin did not reveal the campaign’s budget but emphasized that they achieved their desired ROI. “Our goal was to try to fund 53 new NextJob job coaching scholarships and we reached that in week three,” Veltre says. “We’re also excited about how many people are ‘liking’ us on Facebook or following us on
Twitter because you don’t do those things unless you feel like you’ve connected with the company on a more core level.” NextJob also benefited from the campaign, experiencing a noticeable boost in website traffic, says John Courtney, CEO of NextJob. “Fifth Third’s been a great thought leader in the industry, and they haven’t been shy about talking to other banks and investors about why this is good for the industry’s reputation.” The Reemployment campaign will differentiate Fifth Third from other firms in the financial sector, says Mich Bergesen, global director of financial services at New York-based global branding firm Landor Associates. “It’s an ingenious idea because it’s actually
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counterintuitive to invest further bank resources in a mortgage customer who’s behind on his or her payment. They market themselves as trying to find solutions, wanting to find ways to get their customers back to work, and that puts a human face on the brand in a way that isn’t focused on the bottom line, and it’s very authentic.” Adds Veltre: “We weren’t focused on trying to drive a business outcome. We were trying to drive an outcome for individuals. You earn trust, you earn back your reputation, whether that’s as an industry overall or as a company in that industry. You do that by being a company that’s accountable, that makes commitments to their communities. Don’t say what you’re going to do. Do it.” m
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