When creating concepts, I’m always focused on ideas with “legs.” No matter how clever the idea, it doesn’t work unless it can be translated across multiple mediums. FirstBank approached us to pitch how to get the message out about their new tagline, Banking for Good. We explored the idea that “good” is multi-faceted and means different things to different people. While there’s certainly a philanthropic component, there are also other aspects like community, mental and physical health, kindness, and on an on.
We set out to own Good and presented a multi-channel approach with initiatives that encompassed web, mobile, digital, social, video, experiential and media placement.
In a world drowning in bad news, we wanted to share “good” news that’s happening everywhere. We’d accomplish this in a variety of ways. First, we’d create and launch a mobile app with a feed of good news waiting for you whenever you felt down. Alerts would pop up on your phone whenever something good happened. And whenever you banked at Firstbank, your receipt would tell you something positive. We’d also seek out media partnerships with local news broadcasts so that good new crawls would scroll the screen at regularly scheduled times.
We wanted to drive high visibility for Firstbank. We proposed a Let’s Make a Deal experiential event. Leveraging the client’s logo, at random times, we’d secretly place giant orange boxes anywhere in Colorado. We’d place hints about where they were in Firstbank’s social feeds. When Coloradans came across these boxes, if they donated to charity on the spot, they’d have a chance at picking possible prizes from 3 different boxes. We would take video of these events and use them to drive social content—a 20 foot box dropping open would make a big visual impact.
We would also create a web-based version of the game and partner with local businesses to give away prizes for donations.
We would create several health-related events around Colorado. Firstbank would sponsor 5k runs, healthy cooking classes, yoga classes in the park, and “health crawls” that brought local health businesses together to create an afternoon event.
We suggested that Firstbank position themselves as Colorado’s “good” neighbor by creating a street team with a highly visible and recognizable vehicle that would come to the aid of Coloradans in need.
When disaster strikes, Firstbank would partner with local celebrities to raise money for disaster relief. We would partner with a payment platform to create individual SMS lines to send money to your favorite celebrity speaking out on behalf of a cause. That celebrity would highlight donations on their social feeds as well as periodically return texts to those gave.
We were one of two finalists for this pitch before I transitioned out my role, so I’m not sure if we ultimately got it. But, I do know the client was excited about what we had proposed and was surprised at how deeply we had pursued the concept.