Company: Bank Of Montreal
Company Description: We’re proud to be fueling growth and expanding possibilities for individuals, families and businesses. More than 12 million customers count on us for personal and commercial banking, wealth management and investment services.
Nomination Category: Marketing Campaign Categories - Industry
Nomination Sub Category: Marketing Campaign of the Year - Financial Products & Services
 Nomination Title: Road to Recovery 2021
- Which will you submit for this nomination, a video of up to five (5) minutes in length about the nominated campaign or program, OR written answers to the questions for this category? CHOOSE ONE:
Written answers to the questions
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the nominated video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video.
- If you are providing written answers to the questions for this category, you must answer this first question: Specify the date on which this campaign or program was launched:
Feb 9, 2021
- If you are providing written answers to the questions for this category, you must answer this second question: Describe the genesis of the nominated campaign or program: the reasons it was initiated, the challenges it was created to address, the problems it was developed to solve, etc. (up to 250 words):
Total 250 words used.
The 95:5 rule says that corporations change service providers like banks once every five years. That means only 20% of business buyers are “in the market” in a year or 5% in a quarter. Therefore, 95% of B2B buyers are not in the market at any given time.
83% of typical B2B purchasing decisions happen before the buyer engages with a service provider. More than 75% of decision-makers prefer using digital to make their decision. 55% say they use thought leadership as an important way to vet a business and 54% spend one or more hours reading thought leadership per week.
But 71% say that less than half of thought leadership gives them valuable insights; 55% say if a piece doesn’t capture their attention in the first minute, they move on.
So, advertising doesn’t stimulate buying but builds connections to brands ready to activate when they have a need. If our advertising is better at building brand relevant memories then our brand becomes more competitive.
BMO’s lack of awareness in the U.S. meant there was work to do, not just around the BMO brand, but to showcase the depth and breadth of our capabilities, in a relevant way.
We launched Road to Recovery, a U.S. focused advertising campaign to create consideration for BMO among Institutional Investors and C-Suite by distributing timely and relevant content featuring our in-house, experts using a digital-first ad strategy to help clients and prospects navigate the impact of the pandemic amidst the reopening.
- If you are providing written answers to the questions for this category, you must answer this third question: Describe the development of the campaign or program: the planning process, the goal setting, the creative and media development, the scheduling, etc. (up to 250 words):
Total 250 words used.
We developed a content roadmap to 1 Map the 12 pieces of content topics such as macroeconomics, electronic trading, corporate treasury, food and agriculture, ESG, retail, mergers and acquisition, 2 Identify an overarching ‘red thread’ that they connect thematically to (Road to Recovery), 3 Identify the “so-what” factor of each piece of content to ensure the subject matter will cut through. We then stress-tested our roadmap using LinkedIn’s Whitespace Analysis to understand how likely the topics would be uncommon and engaging, the sweet spot, with our target audience.
The goals included exceeding the industry benchmarks of each ad platform and improving the Average Time Spent on content and how engaging our content is vs. our U.S. competitive set in LinkedIn’s Content Marketing Score YOY.
We developed a thought-leadership strategy focused on providing timely, relevant information to institutional investors that gave a bold, unexpected point-of-view on multiple industries and sectors. We leaned on our qualified experts to provide unique perspectives on 12 topics. Historically we’ve used traditional media to reach our target market but the Greenwich Associates 2018 study “The Role of Digital and Social Media in the Investing Process” revealed that the lines between social and traditional media are increasingly blurring – institutional investors now consume social media more commonly than finance-specific trade publications. So, we only used digital and social channels to enable us to reach a qualified corporate audience in a space where content is king, and institutional investors were spending lots of time soaking up information.
- If you are providing written answers to the questions for this category, you must answer this fourth question: Outline the activities and concrete results of this campaign or program since the beginning of 2019. Even if your initiative started before 2020, limit your response to activities and results since the beginning of 2020 only (up to 250 words):
Total 243 words used.
Expertise-driven Content: Featuring 12 specially curated pieces reflecting the extent of BMO Capital Markets’ expertise. Used short and long-form content and a podcast.
Digital-first, Data-driven Media: Content amplification via leading B2B social (LinkedIn), publisher space (Bloomberg) and ad platforms (on Google, Stack Adapt and Contobox). Flighted the media from February 9th to December 17, 2021 to give each piece of content approximately three weeks promotion. Upon interaction with the ad, the reader was directly served the content. Applied data-driven targeting using ad platforms’ affinity and in-market audiences and targeting capabilities (content and contextual) plus our own CRM (client and prospect data) to be where our audience was by using high impact strategic ad placement.
Purpose-driven Creative: Used B2B creative ad platform ‘We Work Here’, that’s rooted in demonstrating our deep expertise. The creative features a visual icon, a BMO branded flag, to claim expertise in sectors, a market or a service we offer.
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Achieved a top 3 ranking (including being ranked #1) in LinkedIn’s Content Marketing Score which measures our influence over the target audience vs. our U.S. competitive set of 11 firms
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Average Time Spent (ATS) reading content was 4:24 minutes vs. ATS of 4:07 minutes YOY
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Overall CTR of 0.22% from 473K Clicks (up 500% YOY)
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Generated 249,000 Unique Visitors (up 567% YOY)
- You have the option to reference here any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 4 words used.
https://awards.bmodesign.io/2022/road-to-recovery-2021/
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