Media & Marketing/Siobhán O'Connell:Before the launch of Halifax Bank in Ireland in November 2006, it had been 20 years since anyone had tried to launch a new consumer bank with a branch network in Ireland.
That was the Munster and Leinster Bank back in 1986, which went on to amalgamate and become Allied Irish Banks.
Halifax is the retail brand of Bank of Scotland (Ireland), part of the UK's HBOS Group. The bank was trading under the Bank of Scotland brand in Ireland since 1989 and it still does for its business arm. Customer confusion as to whether Bank of Scotland was a retail bank or a business bank prompted the re-brand to Halifax.
Establishing a new brand is not cheap. HBOS spent €15 million on marketing and communications in 2006 and that was sustained into 2007, with a spend of €8 million from January to June 2007. Another €15 million has been set aside for 2008.
Halifax's rivals have not been standing idly by. According to the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland (IAPI), last year AIB's ad spend was €12.6 million "above the line", with €5.8 million in the first half of 2007.
This week, AIB launched a new TV ad campaign, created by Rothco, to promote its personal current accounts. Bank of Ireland's ad spend through 2006 was €8.9 million, with a further €5.2 million in the first half. To put the relative spends in perspective, in the first half of 2007, Bank of Scotland and Halifax posted an operating profit of €80 million.
In the same period, the pretax surplus in AIB's retail banking division in Ireland was €534 million.
Between them, AIB and Bank of Ireland hold about 75 per cent of the current account market - AIB opens 12,000-14,000 new accounts every month - while AIB, Bank of Ireland and MBNA control almost 80 per cent of the credit card business in Ireland.
Halifax also has set-up costs which the established banks do not have. The bank has opened 33 retail branches in the past 18 months and a further 13 are planned, most of them in sites that formerly traded as ESB shops.
Research has been central to Halifax's product launches and marketing. Strong inertia among bank customers was one of the key findings of the research, with few people interested in switching bank unless their bank did something bad to them. At the same time, consumers view all banks as much the same and there is little inherent brand loyalty.
Patricia Byrne, senior marketing manager, Bank of Scotland (Ireland), says getting "cut through" is not all about the size of the campaign, but to establish a point of difference. To this end, Halifax's advertising does a lot of rate comparison between itself and its rivals. This tactic is widely used in the UK, but it was not widely practised between Irish banks.
TV ads are supported throughout the year with outdoor, radio, online and direct mail activity promoting the bank's mortgage, credit card and savings products, created by Publicis QMP, planned by independent media planner Ursula Carlin and booked by Zenith Optimedia.
Halifax demands that its advertising works hard, with radio ads for credit cards expected to generate hundreds of calls and at least 10-20 calls expected after a mortgage radio ad is aired. With its television ads, Halifax has tried to give the brand a younger personality, with ads like the Dance Offad set in downtown New York with a gangster rap theme. This creative won four gongs at the recent Shark advertising awards. The Bank Fightad, which sees rival bankers fighting, is also pitched at the younger audience, who are more likely to change their habits. These television campaigns have also been created by Publicis QMP, planned by independent media planner Ursula Carlin and booked by Zenith Optimedia.
Before Halifax launched here, Irish consumers had some familiarity with the brand through spillover TV ads from the UK, so they know that Halifax is an English bank. This issue is one of the main reasons why Halifax is sponsoring the Late Late Showfor two years.
In a first for any Late Late Showsponsor, Halifax secured permission from RTÉ to use the show's famous owl motif in its TV ad stings around the show, and there are plans to use it in further promotional activity in 2008.
Selling print's benefits
Print Sells is a new pan-European press ad campaign to support print as a communications advertising medium. It is a collaborative effort of partners and associations from the entire print chain, including the printing, paper-making and postal industries, with An Post the Irish partner.
Brand partners such as Audi, Omega and American Express agreed to showcase their case studies in Print Sells to demonstrate how printed communications have benefited their business. The campaign is spanning eight weeks, from October to December, and is aimed at key decision-makers from the fields of advertising, marketing and communications in 13 countries.
E-mail: siobhan@businessplus.ie
