In 2019 Barclays wanted to change people’s relationship with money, they wanted to address the lack of confidence in managing finances and staying on top of spending and help people to literally ‘make money work for them’.
Money Unwrapped, With Barclays
The Big Idea
With a suite of new banking features on the Barclays App and a new brand positioning, Barclays wanted to drive consideration (the biggest motivation to switch), by helping people show money who’s boss while demonstrating that the features on their app were even better than the new digital first banking brands like Monzo.
However, the challenge was finding a way to cut through in an inherently dry and dull category, where consumer interest is low.
From Barclays own qual research and multiple psychological studies, it showed that customers don’t like to be lectured, they want to take control into their own hands, and always looking for hacks and tips to help them.
Humour, mixed with intrigue has always been a great way of delivering this type of information and has led to the rise of consumer fact TV shows, such as ‘Eat Well for Less’. People have grown to trust and learn from funny, investigative shows that help them change their habits.
‘Money Unwrapped’ was born; a mini ad-funded show which took a different take on our hit Channel 4 programme ‘Food Unwrapped’. The premise of the show uses humour and investigation to help people eat smarter, so we took the format and used money as the subject matter to demonstrate Barclays tangible proof points.
“Money Unwrapped truly delivered on our key objectives of building trust and serving the nation with products and services that meet their needs. While using branded content in this way hadn’t been tested before, the role Money Unwrapped played in driving consideration was invaluable. We’re delighted with the success of the campaign and the intricate detail that went into the deployment of the content” Charles Quartey, Head of Media, Barclays UK
Making it Happen
The mini ad-funded programme was placed in every ad break of Food Unwrapped for a whole Month.
The x4 spots were set in the distinctive Food-Unwrapped setting, with the same humorous, helpful tone of voice, only this time the cast of Matt, Jimmy and Kate were busting money myths and answering the public’s financial questions – all in a studio adorned with financial props, instead of food.
The spots looked at how customers can use key Barclays app features to make money work for them including freezing their card, categorizing what they spend on, and setting daily spending limits.
We launched on TV with Channel 4 Idents for seamless integration with the show, and created extra promo shots which sat within our other portfolio of lifestyle shows across Linear, VoD and Youtube. The show’s talent (Matt, Jimmy and Kate) also shared the content organically on their own social channels to further amplify the content, reaching millions more.
The Results
The results were amazing! The Money-Unwrapped mini-episodes sat within a wider Barclay’s marketing campaign but contributed 17% of the total increase in consideration over the campaign period, with only 7% of the budget allocation, higher than OOH, Print and Cinema combined.
Based on OMD’s long-term consideration models, the partnership delivered a ROI 2.39 times the campaign average, making it the most successful aspect of the 2019 brand campaign, in spite of the increased investment.