Adrenaline presents at the ABA Bank Marketing Conference to help bank brands create even more connections
On Monday, September 25, Adrenaline’s CXO, Gina Bleedorn, presented at the American Bankers Association Bank Marketing Conference in New Orleans. Using real-life examples of brands that demonstrate personality and humanness, Don’t Just Be Liked, Be Loved gave conference attendees a roadmap to enhance their brands’ human side to create and nurture connections with customers. The session took a deep dive into the powerful use of archetypes to capture the heart of the brand – its ethos and its essence – and how people intuitively and deeply respond to a brand archetype.
Bleedorn says, “Archetypes resonate with people because they represent traits we find in our own personalities. Whether it’s the ‘liberator’ or the ‘creator’ archetype, brands stand for something and it just makes sense to use your own mission and culture within your organization to identify your archetype and live it every day.” Bleedorn adds, “It’s almost like the TV show Friends. Everyone identifies with the characters. ‘Which Friend are you?’ Are you a joker like Chandler, an adventurer like Phoebe or a romantic like Ross? We identify with these characters because they align with our own personalities. We recognize traits in our friends and families. They’re familiar and fun.”
Whether it’s Disney capturing the magic of childhood or Virgin showing adventure in action, brands that use archetypes create something special to which consumers can relate and respond. Brands like Nike, Coke and Starbucks, among many others, represent something larger than their product line, and consumers love it. Brands that use archetypes tap into the essence of our humanness. It could be inspirational, aspirational and elevated or simple, small and crafted. No matter the archetype a brand chooses, people relate to it because it’s about people. Examples of financial brands employing the use of archetypes include Charter Bank and Origin Bank.
In the case of Charter, the Liberator archetype within the Hero family was at the essence of the campaign. Bleedorn says, “With the liberating aspect of the brand, Charter was liberating its customers to be happy, to pursue happiness. What they were doing was equating happiness with banking, so customers are free from the confines of what banking is today.” The campaign generated nearly instantaneous results. Through the checking conversion, which was originally expected to result in widespread dissatisfaction, they had less than 2% attrition. More importantly, the bank had more new checking account openings than ever before in their history. Archetypes are that compelling.
In an upcoming Insights piece, we will take a deeper dive into the power of archetypes and the process of deploying them.
