Social Media Success Story by Australian Bank – Not Quite

Australian mega-bank nab has been widely praised for a marketing campaign it launched on Valentines Day.

The campaign is interesting and to understand the significance you need to read up on the situation that allows Australia’s four largest banks to operate in this market as a virtual “oligopoly on steroids”

The campaign was labelled The Break Up

Down here in Australia, a number of business commentators have talked up the brilliance of this campaign – labelling it a social media success story.

I think labelling this “campaign” a social media success story is wrong for a number of reasons.

1. It’s not original

Queenslanders Credit Union ran a campaign in November 2010 at the height of consumer backlash over the behaviour of the banking oligopoly who increased interest rates over and above the official RBA increase.

Go and check out their Facebook page – go back through the history to November and you’ll note the similarities.

The Queenslanders campaign was actually pretty smart, not least because it was a pure social media campaign – Facebook, blog, YouTube, and Twitter – quick to market, engaged with consumers around an important issue, and encouraged action by the consumer.

2. It’s all about the bank and their brand.

Me Me Me – the consumer message is lost in their gloating over what they’ve done. How much bank brand content did you have to consume before you got to the core message?

What’s amusing is that when you scroll down the homepage of the micro site the whole exercise starts to look like a glorified case study for the marketing agency.

Brands can successfully integrate themselves into the social space – have a look at what Avery Dennison is doing on Facebook – an example of engagement with a very clear segment of their customer base.

3. There is no engagement in the comments

One of the central tenements of social media is engagement – of understanding consumer issues and being able to engage in dialogue. When I look at the comments on the posts they’ve published I don’t see a lot of engagement or genuineness – it feels very controlled – rote.

4. It’s not obvious why their changes are relevant.

Why should I care? Nothing about this marketing stunt communicated why I should care. Really successful campaigns like Ford’s Fiesta Movement – as described by US social media expert Jason Falls clearly articulate purpose and tell me why I should care.

Ford created a new way of communicating with its customers and showed the world how to do social media on scale

In summary, this looks like a marketing stunt – like a typical multi-channel marketing stunt that just happened to use some social media channels to distribute the message.