Westpac banks on new campaign platform

No matter how big or small a brand may be, launching an entirely new campaign platform is never an easy and stress-free undertaking. Stepping away from all the familiarity and equity built up over the years can be a daunting experience for any marketer, given charting an entirely new course isn’t guaranteed to deliver the immediate commercial outcomes many in the business might be expecting.

Of course, we’re not saying that change isn’t a necessary part of a brand’s lifecycle; in fact, with the right idea, support, and—of course—time, a new campaign platform can become just as embedded as its predecessor.  However, once a new course is set, the challenge is to hit the ground running, ensuring every element of a new campaign launch is working in tandem to craft the desired memory structures for the brand.

As one of Australia’s big four banking goliaths, Westpac’s new campaign platform titled “Double You” (courtesy of The Tuesday Club) is built around a simple creative device: leveraging the brand’s distinctive “W” logo to play on the idea of having a “double you.” As CMO Michelle Klein explains:‍

“Australians are stretched. They’re busy, burdened and often stuck in a loop of financial admin. What they want from their bank is practical support that lightens the load and helps them get things done. ‘Double You’ brings that promise to life by showing how a bank can be a force multiplier for whatever matters to them.”‍

It’s a clear and well thought out strategy—using one of the bank’s strongest assets to generate emotional appeal, thus simultaneously hitting on the two building blocks necessary for branded memorability. The question is, did this insight translate into something meaningful for consumers in the campaign’s lead creative?

In terms of grabbing people’s attention, “Double You” delivered. People responded positively to the twin visual concepts and whimsical music, which worked well together to create a cinematic narrative that elicited light-hearted amusement.

But while the play on words between “W” and “Double You” was broadly understood, some came unstuck as to exactly what the practical benefit of having a clone meant in a banking context. As a result, not everyone found what the ad was putting forward to be credible or relevant—with impressions of Westpac being a modern, trustworthy, and supportive bank not coming through as strongly as hoped.

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That said, hitting on all these impressions is a lot to ask of a single execution within an entirely new campaign platform. Often, the role of a launch execution is simply to build familiarity around a new creative direction. And once that’s been achieved, other touchpoints can then build further meaning, depth, and proof points around the platform.

In this respect, “Double You”s potential becomes clearer. While the quirky tone jarred somewhat against people’s existing ideas and expectations of the bank, that was to be expected, and Westpac put in place steps to actively mitigate these challenges. Whether by linking the brand with the hook early as the dad gazes up at the recognizable Westpac billboards, or by dotting the narrative with the brand’s distinctive red color and reinforcing “Double You = W” throughout, the ad deployed enough ownable devices to ensure the connection back to Westpac was as seamless as possible.

Ultimately, the ad’s ability to grab attention and generate branded memories for Westpac means the new lead execution for “Double You” ticks a lot of the right boxes. With a series of connected executions that are expected to follow that build further depth to the core campaign idea, the bank can be confident that its new platform has all the ingredients necessary to keep Westpac at the front of Australians’ minds for generations to come.