EmotionScan
Bank of New Zealand
Issue 31 | June 2014
Agency
Colenso BBDO
Creative Team
Creative Chairman Nick Worthington Digital Creative Director Terry Williams-Wilcock Art Director Kristal Knight Copywriter Rachael Macklin Business Director Sarah Williams
Production Team
Agency Producer Matt Couston Digital Business Director Greg Forsyth Technical Director Paul Headington Digital Creative Geoffrey Joe Digital Developers Craig Thompson Craig MacGregor Digital Flash Developers Matt Visser Mike Delucchi David Quick Senior Account Director Vanessa Marklew Senior Account Manager Hannah Watson Planners Ruth Blair Angela Legge CEO and Co-founder of nViso Tim Llewellynn CTO and Co-founder of nViso Matteo Sorci Professor of Psychology Stuart Carr
Other Credits
Chief Marketing Officer Craig Herbison Head of Marketing Communications Rob Cooke Campaign Manager Robert Orr
Date
September – October 2013
Background
The Bank of New Zealand's ambition was to help all New Zealanders be good with money. With this campaign, they wanted to reach 'Retail Affluents', 25- 49 year olds who were on the way up, technologically savvy and who aspired to be smarter with their money.
Regardless of whether they currently banked with BNZ or not, the task was to offer them a one-to-one MoneyReview, where they could discuss ways to improve their personal finances.
Idea
Most people struggle to be honest with themselves about money problems, let alone with a bank manager. So the objective was to help people understand what was holding them back from confronting the situation, without feeling they were being judged or given the hard-sell.
EmotionScan was created to be a tool that would let people explore their own subconscious feelings about money in private so they could work out for themselves the areas they personally needed help with. Using advanced emotion recognition technology, EmotionScan tracked and analysed the microexpressions of people through their webcams while they were interviewed about various money issues.
A highly personalised scan report suggested the areas where there were problems and a one-to-one MoneyReview with the bank was just a click away.
The campaign was shaped around the tool, intriguing people about the technology and the psychology behind the idea. An online film told the story and an interactive Adshel gave people a taste of emotion recognition technology, allowing them to print out an 'emotion snapshot' and driving them online for the full experience.
Results
EmotionScan introduced a new approach to banking, with technology helping people learn more about themselves so they could be better with money.
Over 200,000 people took part in an EmotionScan experience, or 6% of New Zealand adults.
And as a result, New Zealanders were 15% more confident that BNZ was the bank to help them be good with money.
The campaign received attention from national and international media, including being featured on the BBC World Service show, Click.
Our Thoughts
Technology is changing both what we do and how we do it in advertising. The big idea here is the facial-recognition app which could read and report on the meaning of the minute twitches and grimaces of everybody who interacted with it. The communication simply had to tell people to go online and try it.
The insight is that though technology is changing, people aren’t. Most people know when they are in a mess. Invariably, though, they will keep it to themselves. What makes them do something about it is when they know someone else knows too. And that’s the genius of this. It gives an exit to a host of internalised fears and feelings.