Campaign summary
Allica is a new business bank, purpose-built for established UK small businesses. In 2023 it asked the agency Rooster Punk to create its first-ever marketing campaign. Allica wanted to showcase the combination of qualities that make it unique: old-school relationship banking with modern fintech and attractive interest rates.
The challenge? Allica was completely unknown. To have any chance of grabbing a share of voice and generating new business it had to take risks and be bold. Rooster Punk was tasked with creating something that simultaneously said ‘new approach’ and ‘old-fashioned values’ – and to make it memorable.
Taking inspiration from Allica’s own orange logo device, they flipped the graphic and turned it into that most traditional of British banking symbols– a bowler hat. Allica’s bright orange ‘money hat’ was born. In an integrated campaign that ran across TV, radio, social media, OOH, digital display, and press, prospects were urged to ‘Get your money hat on’.
The campaign shot Allica slap-bang into SME buyers’ consideration sets. Brand searches increased 14-fold and the campaign generated a 61% increase in interest among small business owners. Hats off to the team!
About the brand or client company
Allica is a new business bank, purpose-built for established small businesses in the UK. It was granted its UK banking license in 2019.
Strategic context or business challenge
In 2023 Allica Bank was completely unknown. To have a chance of grabbing a share of voice in a market dominated by established competitors it had to take risks and be bold. It asked agency Rooster Punk to create its first-ever marketing campaign, promoting the brand’s old-school style of relationship banking allied to modern fintech and attractive interest rates.
Objectives and strategy
The primary objective was to establish Allica Bank as a recognizable and trustworthy brand among UK small business owners. The campaign aimed to achieve significant brand awareness and interest, measured through metrics such as unprompted recall and increased customer inquiries. Success was defined as achieving notable growth in brand recognition and engagement within the target market.
Target audience and customer insight
The campaign targeted owners and managers of established small businesses across the UK. These individuals were typically time-poor and skeptical of banking claims. Customer insight revealed a general fatigue with traditional banking promises.
Messaging and creative
Breaking through banking boredom: Banking is boring. Drab-toned adverts promise banks ‘will be there for us’ or similar platitudes. And when it comes to business banking, the lack of interest extends to the products themselves. Businesses get painfully little return for their money compared to consumer accounts. And then along came Allica Bank.
The challenge for Rooster Punk was to create something that simultaneously said ‘new approach’ and ‘old-fashioned values’ – and to make it memorable.
“Get your money hat on”: Taking inspiration from Allica’s own orange logo device, they flipped the graphic and turned it into that most traditional of banking symbols – a bowler hat. Allica’s bright orange ‘money hat’ was born. The money-hat effectively embodied the bank’s fresh approach and its roots in traditional finance.
The visual and associated “Get your money hat on” message was designed to be instantly recognizable and memorable, ensuring strong brand recall. The team created a mixture of brand-level and product-focused messaging to cater to different stages of the customer journey.
Media and channels used
The campaign was intended to test Allica’s new distinctive asset and message across multiple, integrated channels. It ran from October to December 2023 on:
- TV
- Radio
- Internet
- Social media
- Digital display
- Out of Home
- Press
Rooster Punker partnered with Mackerel Media and media spending was focused on the UK’s Birmingham, Manchester, and South-Central areas which are home to a high concentration of Allica’s target market of established small businesses.
The TV commercial, which ran on Sky Adsmart, Sky VoD, and social channels, featured different characters wearing quirky hats to represent the many metaphorical hats that business owners wear every day, ending with a character putting on Allica’s ‘money hat’.
1,000 Bowler Hats
Internally at Allica, the orange bowler fired imaginations. The ‘money hat’ was all over social media thanks to a selfie competition at the Allica Bank Great British Entrepreneur Awards. The team ordered 1,000 orange bowlers to use in internal and external activation. For the internal campaign launch, the Curzon cinema in London emblazoned “Get your money hats on” across its frontage as Allica colleagues bowled up for the event.
Timescales
The campaign ran from October to December 2023. Initial phases focused on brand awareness through high-impact channels, followed by targeted lead-generation activities. Post-campaign tracking in January 2024 measured the impact and guided future phases.
Results
A bold reimagining of a brand asset, carefully launched with memorable messaging into a conservative space, shot challenger bank Allica into SME buyers’ consideration sets.
Brand awareness
- 60 million impressions within a target audience of 60,000 SMEs.
- Allica brand searches increased 14-fold during the campaign (from under 2,000 in January 2023 to over 24,000 by November).
- 4% uplift from a baseline of zero for brand awareness: just 1% shy of a long-established competitor.
- 33% unprompted recall and a 61% increase in interest among small business owners.
Activation
- More than 25,000 direct clicks to the website.
- Google Ad clicks increased more than 15-fold between January and November 2023.
- Allica topped the Deloitte UK Tech Fast 50 rankings, which track the fastest-growing technology firms.
Testimonial
“Launching Allica’s first brand campaign was a nerve-wracking experience – you want your customers to respond to it, the internal team to love it, and to see a commercial impact. Achieving one of these would have made the campaign a success but with Rooster Punk’s help we delivered on all three. The extent to which customers, employees, and our wider fintech community have responded to their ‘money hat’ concept has been overwhelming.”
-Georgina Burks, Brand Marketing Manager, Allica Bank
