╠ Commonwealth Bank - Dollarmite ╣

Many apologies for the random update schedule. With Melbourne Anime Festival looming most of my time is going to that. However that shall be finished in two weeks so look forward to some normality then

Anyway I'd just like to say thankyou for all those who read or commented on my woolworths insight piece. It was really inspirational to get responses like that and also taught me a lot. One of the things that surprised me most however is that my post was even popular enough to pick up a bot in that of Tina which seemed to just respond because there was mentioning of a credit card.

Also please note the logo is slightly different this time around. I lost the original in my laptop issues and needed to start again. I'm happy with how it turned out...and since the main difference is in the font it doesn't hurt too much since it's all covered up. Anyway on with the show.

Commonwealth Bank - Dollarmite



Overall I must say I quite enjoy this ad. I think it is compiled quite well and it all starts with the first line...

"Keeping with the banks determination to evolve..."

This line just sets it up, it embodies everything that the banks current media campaign is standing for. Most importantly the word determination which is actually emphasized because of it's importance and it links with the previously established slogan of determined to be different to actually make sure you know who the ad is for without stating it.

I believe there is a lot of power to this approach. Once you label something with advertising of a brand it seems to cheapen it overall and I think this can even apply to advertising. This is why some of the most successful ads can be the ones like Cadbury's Gorilla ad which don't directly spam the brand directly at you.

Now for those of you unaware of the Determined to be different tagline, it may well be because you missed this ad.

Commonwealth Bank - Determined to be different



This campaign itself was quite spectacular. The beauty of it was that it wasn't your conventional campaign saying 'buy this'. All this campaign did was launch a tagline 'Determined to be different' fast. And as far as I'm aware it succeeded. That brand spanking new tagline has effectively established its place in such a prominent company.

The reason this needed to be established is because banks used to be horrible at customer service. They were just another Telstra basically. Then along comes St George with superior customer service and bam...all of a sudden the market for customer service excellence in banks begins. Commonwealth is not the only bank doing this. I'm sure a few of you have noticed the banks all arcing up recently such as NAB's Climb every mountain.

Sure there are nonsensical and borderline disrespectful misrepresentations of Australia but it is different and as such syncs with the tag. I'm not sure how many of you can remember back but in the time of this ad these advertisements were everywhere. Ridiculous amounts of money simply advertising determined to be different...and overall I think it was worth it.

None the less, back to the original ad. Each line and shot in this ad helps so much in so many different ways. First you've got the transformer dollarmite, and I'm not sure about kids these days but if this ad was around when I was a kid I would have gone up to my mum and made her sign me up for it no matter what it was. Getting kids excited about banks is sort of an untapped market...mainly because kids are poor by nature...but kids become adults, more importantly adults who are too lazy to transfer over to a new bank. So it's good to see some targeting there.

There's also the humour aspect. Personally I think to most this would be an enjoyable ad overall. Compared to normal ads you wouldn't feel too hurt if this was in an ad break...some of you may even smile or chuckle at it. That in itself gives a lot of power to the ad because it means you're open to giving the ad attention which effectively makes you mroe susceptible to its message.

I really like the reps response to the idea as well because it is so smart, so calculated and because of this it gives you a sense that you would trust these individuals with the big decisions. It makes you happy to have these people in charge of your money.

Overall sneaking all of this into one 29 second ad is quite an achievement. I am quite proud of Commonwealth bank for this and am a proud member of their bank.

Anyway thankyou again for taking the time to read my blog. Feel free to comment or whatever. Also remember there is a poll to vote on which ad I will break down in the possibly distant future. It finishes soon so if you want your vote to count get in quick.

Happy Banking