Monzo: A case study in creative campaigns 💰

Hey 👋

Welcome to Neighbourhood Post issue #31 - easy to implement digital marketing ideas straight through your metaphorical letterbox.

I’m writing this on the train back from London - I’m up there a few times over the next fortnight, shout if you fancy a coffee ☕️

Anyway, on with today’s newsletter - we’ll be taking inspiration from a banking Goliath.

👉 By the way, if you’ve missed previous newsletters you’ll find them here.

📩 And if you’ve been forwarded this email you can subscribe here.

Money never felt like Monzo 🤑 

Stealing is wrong…

In all instances except one.

Taking inspiration from marketing campaigns with bigger budgets helps you save time and money.

Obviously don’t plagiarise 😂

But unearthing frameworks that big organisations spend months and thousands of pounds establishing provides a lot of useful direction.

Take this corker of a campaign:

On first glance a fairly standard approach.

But take a look at the TV ad:

Why’s it so good?

There are a couple of reasons - lets dive in…

#1 - It focuses on feelings and emotions

If you want people to take action you have to make them feel something.

The faff of traditional bank transfers, forgetting 16 digit customer numbers, trekking to your local branch, waiting 3-5 working days for a payment.

It’s not a message that needs spelling out.

We instantly relate to it.

Humans are wired to be more motivated to eradicate a negative experience than chase a positive one.

Sometime we can be too functional with our copy and messaging

Or too generic: “we’ll do X, so you don’t have to.”

How can we take it up a level to something that evokes an emotional response?

#2 - It’s visually creative

You might expect the ad to show more literal depictions of frustration.

The long queues, searching for a card reader, waiting for a payment to transfer.

I imagine that’s what Natwest had done if they’d tried to execute the same idea.

Instead, Monzo get metaphorical.

It’s fun, creative and keeps you on your toes.

#3 - It’s meme-able and multichannel

OK, I’ve made up a word and combined two points in one.

But hear me out...

The campaign has legs - it’s alive, fluid and can be applied to all kinds of current and future trends.

Take a look at their Twitter (still refusing to call it anything else) header:

It’s brilliant and clever. Everyone on Twitter gets it.

The possibilities for memes and applications are endless.

That makes it multi-channel, and Monzo have embraced it 100%.

They could have shared the same campaign messaging everywhere, but look at LinkedIn:

They’ve recognised that a different platform and a different audience require more relatable content.

Let’s get back to stealing taking inspiration… ✨

Monzo spent a lot of time and money building a successful campaign. We can take their framework and apply it to our own.

So spend some time asking:

How can you put feelings and emotions at the forefront of your messaging?

How can you visually represent that in a creative way?

How can you tailor messaging to match the context of different channels?

That’s it. Have a great weekend

✌️

What we’re looking at 👀 and listening to 👂

📰 I got sent this great article on the future of the internet / social media / online communities (thanks Nick!). It’s going to feed into some wider thoughts for a future newsletter, so get an advanced look in preparation!

📺 Long-term readers will know how much we all love The Bear on Disney+. Well Season 3 is coming on the 27 June, so if you haven’t seen it yet you can binge the first two at a rate of 0.64 episodes a day and you’ll have caught up!

Before you go - we’ll never use these newsletters to directly sell you our services, but we’re always here if you need any expertise or support 👍