2013 Silver Financial Services and Utilities

Client Barclaycard

How did the campaign make a difference? Multiple channels showed that Barclaycard's deals were the very best in the market; an ice lolly creative adapted to make best use of each channel, and 75,286 new accounts were created.

What details of the strategy make this a winning entry? The market is awash with card offers, so how will potential customers know what will give them the best value? A range of market-leading deals combined a long balance transfer term with a low fee, leading to celebration of Barclaycard's 'hottest ever offers' for the summer, with a fully integrated multichannel campaign including direct mail, online, in-branch and social media. Digital activity used online channels including Barclaycard.co.uk, search, aggregator channels and display, with multiple sets of open-market banners with test-and-learn activity, a bespoke splash page for the campaign, and AOL and Yahoo email login page takeovers. An interactive page grabber was used on networks and the Yahoo homepage for the first time. The campaign was supported across Facebook, Twitter and Google+. In addition to acquisition messages, there was content to create engagement. Halfway through June, passthelolly.co.uk hosted a prize draw with an imbedded pop-up tweet link. The lolly gradually melted, eventually revealing the winner of the £1,000 Virgin Travel voucher.

How did creativity bring the strategy to life? Not only were the June offers 'hot', they wouldn't be around for long. So a creative idea using a melting ice lolly was perfect. Bold and seasonal, it had stand-out, and its simplicity made it flexible enough to use across a huge raft of channels. The lolly dripped and melted in the heat, subtly pushing an immediate need to act. The idea extended naturally into staff engagement activity: promoted by posters, pull-up banners and digital media, staff took part in lolly and chilli eating challenges, filming them and uploading them to the intranet for colleagues to comment and vote on. And there was a big lolly giveaway day at UK and India offices.

Results Acquisition direct marketing exceeded targets by 56%, with a conversion rate 0.10% higher than expected (target conversion = 0.17%, actual conversion = 0.27%). Digital activity saw uplifts by product of up to 38% versus the previous month. The interactive page grabber achieved a very high click-through rate at 3.48% and the engagement rate was 20%, which is 11 times the industry average for rich media. Facebook and Twitter fans increased by 4,779, with over 4.1 million Twitter impressions, 9,532 competition entries and 7,449 tweets mentioning #passthelolly.