Do April Fools’, but make it banking.
Pair a brand personality of ‘Cool, clever, cheeky’ with April Fool’s day pranks, and what do you get?
A social strategists dream.
4 years of fooling millions
The Cardashians mean limitless credit
ME’s first foray into April Fools was a huge brand moment.
We released a new line of credit cards with no limit, to help customers keep up with the latest fads and fashions.
Inspired by existing card taxonomy and design – where all debit and credit cards at ME have a name - the launch consisted of four credit cards to choose from: cim, chloé, courtney and cris.
Results:
The Cardashians reached 480,500 users organically on Facebook, with an engagement rate of 9.65%. Our best performing social campaign yet.
It was ME’s first time having content mentioned in the media, driving another 900k media impressions.
Snag by ME: free Bunnings snags with every tap
For 2017 we tapped into a well loved Aussie tradition: the sausage sizzle.
Leveraging the popularity of the Bunnings Snag, and our tradition of Democracy Sausages, we launched: Snag – a debit card which delivers $2.50 cash back on every sausage sizzle purchase.
Complimenting the social post, we created a simple product page experience, sponsored content by ‘famous Sausage blogger’ Gary Brat, and a branded ‘gotcha’ for those who tried to apply for a card.
Results:
Reached 290,000 people on social on April 1, with a Facebook engagement rate of 5.4% (industry benchmark of 1.5%).
Snag was featured in news.com.au, Mumbrella, Lifehacker and more: reaching 1.79+million Aussies from earned media.
The $1,300 spent on the campaign generated an equivalent ad spend of $390,400
Drove 3,580 people to a product page (with 3x the conversion rate of our real transaction account product pages at the time!)
The product was endorsed by the guy who was fined for flying a drone to Bunnings to get a snag.
Australia’s first disposable bank card: Chuck
Meet ME's new eco-friendly card – created for the forgetful and the clumsy.
Born from the insights of a certain type of customer who always had to order replacement cards, we combined the latest trend of ‘eco-friendly everything’ and made a disposable bank card.
We sent out fake media releases with sheet of six ready-to-lose cards, so for those customers who really wanted this product, they got a laugh in the mail weeks later as we sent them out their own 6-pack.
Introducing Cash™: The limited edition fragrance by ME.
The smell of Australian money has a certain je ne sais quoi – you don’t know what it is, but you know you like it. It is a unique scent that scientists have tried to replicate for many years but hasn’t been mastered… until now.
Poking fun at the ridiculous ‘wearable's’ being created for contactless payments, ME launched Cash - first ‘wearable’ that’s actually wearable.
Notes of Cash
Debit card product page
Faux Sausage Blogger Gary Brat, endorsing Snag
The tone of voice became a relevant and known brand attribute
ME’s April Fools day content became so well loved by the ME Community, we’d created a loyal fan base beyond April 01st. ‘The Cardashians’ and ‘Snag’ made come backs well after their ‘launch dates’.
This social strategy focusing on customer engagement and brand personality took ME from the 13th leading bank on social media, to the leading most engaged bank on social media* after 1.5 years of developing the new social strategy, *according to Unmetric. A result I sustained for my 3 years as Social Strategist.
Having bold conversations online
Over my time leading the team, our social brand developed a strong and daring voice. One that wasn’t afraid to speak out on social issues, and hijack public conversation.
See how one perfectly targeted influencer stunt ended in a week of avocado-madness 🥑
An average month of content at ME (🛠’s are service outage notifications).
The team
Social Strategist and Content Strategist: Bec Thexton
Head of Content: Scott Dare
Social Community Specialist: Annabelle Willis
Digital Channel Specialist: Jason De Luca
Videographer: Harlan Alston
Designers: ME Bank Brand Design Team