iShares is a subsidiary Barclays Global Investment and the first company to sell Exchange Trade Funds (ETFs) in Europe. However in recent years a number of other European financial institutions have launched their own ETFs, which has lead to the ETF market becoming quite confused, particularly when looking at it from the investors view point.
The challenge
As a result of these new entries iShares has seen its overall share of the market decrease to 35 per cent. It therefore wanted to re-launch iShares back into the market and achieve a number of objectives; to exceed a target of $20 billion Assets Under Management, to re-establish i-Shares as the leader in ETFs and to increase overall market share.
A pan-European campaign, spanning markets in the UK, Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands, was devised. The first step was to talk to iShares sales teams, to understand their top prospect institutions by market. From there 10 institutions to target by country were selected.
The solution
Then, the journey to each office was scrutinised – i.e. from London Bridge to Blackrock Asset Management, to establish touchpoints for communication. These included the A frame boards’ used by City AM distributors, phone boxes outside Goldman Sachs, coffee shops that targets used and bus T sides. Where an existing out of home opportunity was not available they were created – for example by parking ad-vans outside JP Morgan and doing stunts outside offices.
In the UK, collateral was placed at landmark sites in London’s busiest railway stations including Cannon Street, Fenchurch Street, Liverpool Street, London Bridge and Waterloo, at ticket gateways on the underground throughout the Square Mile and on escalator runs in major Tube stations in the City.
In Germany ad scooters and giant poster sites were in operation in both Frankfurt and Munich. iShares was also the first brand to dominate one particular Frankfurt underground station. Meanwhile maxi sites in Italy, including the Via Manzoni in the heart of Milan. The design had to conform and be approved by the Milanese authorities for look and feel to ensure it fitted with advertising standards in this location.
Ads were also run in major financial publications and newsletters across all six markets.
As well as above the line media, an online campaign saw a full plethora of targeting techniques used, such as contextual targeting around ETF editorial, behavioral targeting of people who had visited the website and the placing of banner ads on high traffic financial sites.. Online, a microsite was also built as the destination for all calls to action.
A specially designed DM campaign was also rolled out. This used UV light which encouraged the audience to find a hidden message within the pack that promoted the iShares ETF offering. This went to the target audience in all six European markets, and drove further traffic to the microsite.
The results
The campaign achieved all of its objectives across all markets. The target of $20 billion Assets Under Management (AUM) was achieved – in fact exceeded at $24 billion AUMs – 20 per cent over target. Based on the trend before the activity took place $6.5 billion above 38 per cent above where they would have finish had the activity not taken place.
Rick Andrews, had of marketing at iShares said “This was an incredible feat for a media spend of only £3m across six markets. That is why we believe that this entry deserves to win the award.”
