‘Distinctively different’: Why Nationwide’s long-term strategy is paying dividends
A lesson in long-term effectiveness, Nationwide’s ‘Voices’ campaign leveraged five years of experience to meet the demands of the coronavirus crisis, flexing at speed to reflect consumers’ evolving needs.
Nationwide kicked off its ‘Voices’ campaign back in September 2016. Some 120 ads later, the campaign is in full swing again with a new message encouraging consumers to put saving at the heart of their post-lockdown plans.
Building on 2019’s ‘Payday Saveday’ campaign, based on the insight that 11 million Brits have £100 or less in savings, the building society wants to tread a fine line between supporting people who have suffered Covid-related financial hardship, while attempting to engage a cohort of 6 million ‘accidental savers’ who suddenly have money left at the end of the month.
This is not a straightforward conversation to have, admits director of advertising and media Paul Hibbs.
“There’s a whole load of ads we shot that you won’t see. We shot them in December because we felt we got the mood right and then January’s lockdown came, which was more severe than perhaps we thought,” he explains.
“We didn’t want to make light of what was a difficult situation for people, so the ads that felt right in November and December weren’t right by the time January came. We regrouped at the start of January for the campaign we launched in February and this is when the idea of saving for a sunny day came from conversations around the agency and Nationwide. We thought that’s the tone we need to head for.”
Having an established brand platform like Voices made it far easier for Nationwide to flex the message, as did the fact the campaign has a track record of shifting between genres, artists and tones.
