Cherryflava

Productvertising: Banking promo that screams ‘yes please’

Posted on 19. Feb, 2007 by Jonathan Cherry in Design

It’s not often that a banking story gets us excited, but when a bank gets Ideo; our favourite, world-famous Palo Alto product design company -  to help them innovate, we sit up and shut down.

When faced with the challenge to grow their customer base, Bank of America could have spent millions of useless dollars on advertising – or they could build a better product and get people to come to them.

With the help of Ideo, they can up with something called Keep the Change.

The service rounds up purchases made with a Bank of America Visa debit
card to the nearest dollar and transfers the difference from
individuals’ checking accounts into their savings accounts. The
convenience and ease of rounding up now helps members save money over
the long run.

For the first three months, the bank matches the savings at 100%. That means for every Keep the Change
transfer, they’ll contribute the same amount to the client’s account. And when
the three months are over, they continue contributing 5% a year, every
year – to make it even easier to save.

The results?

In less than one year, the Keep the Change campaign attracted 2.5 million customers, translating
into more than 700,000 new checking accounts and one million new
savings accounts for Bank of America. Impressed by the unique and
intuitive nature of the program, 99% of its subscribers have chosen to
keep the service–along with their change.

So next time you see a bank throwing your money away on advertising and irritating you while trying to watch Egoli – think of this campaign and imagine how much of your own cash they could be been giving back to you.

Read: ‘Keep the Change’ bank service for Bank of America – Ideo
Advertising through product design – MIT
Keep the change – Bank of America