BankWest has launched a new low-rate credit card with a $10m-plus marketing drive through The Brand Agency—the biggest national campaign in the bank’s history.
The multi-platform marketing push for the BankWest Zero MasterCard maintains the successful ‘rebel against your bank’ theme, which was used last year to launch BankWest’s TeleNet Saver and Term Deposit products.
BankWest said its Zero MasterCard is the first credit card on the Australian market to offer zero interest on balance transfers and zero interest on new purchases for the first four months (excluding cash advances), as well as no annual fee.
BankWest head of products and marketing, Dave Hunt, said the Zero MasterCard is “the first real, true zero offer”because while some cards offer zero annual fee or zero interest on balance transfers, no other card offers both.
“The credit card market is not as competitive as it could or should be, so we want to drive more competition in Australia—customers think it’s a crowded and undifferentiated market place,” Hunt said. “We’re expecting the majority [of uptake] to come through phone and internet channels and we expect it to be a significant uptake. It’s the biggest campaign we’ve ever launched by a considerable amount.”
The campaign rolled out this week and consists of print, TV, OOH, and online, as well as street theatre and PR-led activities. The internet is playing a substantial role in driving online applications, with the online campaign—which is being fronted by former Nine network personality Sami Lukis—accounting for 20% of the media budget.
BankWest is aiming for 60% of respondents to apply for the credit card online, with “the media spend and call to action throughout the campaign reflecting the emphasis on the online channel,” The Brand Agency’s group account director, Erin Corner, said.
Hunt also wanted the Zero MasterCard marketing push to have the same “fresh look and feel” of last year’s successful TeleNet Term Deposits campaign, which attracted more than 21,000 customers and generated deposits worth in excess of $2bn.
“Of new dollars going into the personal deposits market, 25% has come into BankWest, so it just goes to show how well the ‘Rebel’ campaign’s done,” Hunt said.
“It’s been a real success. It indicated to lot of people that we were worth looking at, that we were different from other financial institutions.”
