ING experiments with Viral Marketing Campaign
Steve Rubel beat me to this, but still here I go.
Is it the first financial institution that goes for a online viral marketing campaign? According to Steve it is not. Still ING Direct is quite brave and innovative to try this out.
Yesterday, ING Direct USA launched a viral marketing campaign focused on reaching renters and potential first time home buyers. The campaign outlines the virtues of home ownership and promotes ING Direct’s Orange Mortgage product.
The whole campaign is supported by a dedicated website called MoveOutMoveUp.com. The site contains video clips and games depicting the humorous and often frustrating side of renting. Next to that a quite appealing bonus item could be a hidden secret mortgage offer that effectively reduces the mortgage closing cost to zero.
One of the most exciting and viral features of the campaign is that ING Direct has seeded its short films on a viral video site like Youtube.com (already three weeks ago!). You can watch the clips via this YouTube channel.
With reputation risk and compliance at the forefront of every bankers mind these days, the step to start a campaign like this is very brave.
But, where the campaign to an average person with a very conservative stance towards banking operations might not be well received, to the targeted groups in the US society (obviously “the connected young/first time home buyers” or Generation Y) a campaign like this might be very well suited. This group might even have been waiting for something like this, given ING Direct’s reputation of challenging and non-traditional campaigns.
As of this moment the video’s have been watched around 100 – 200 times each. I wonder what it will be in a week’s time? Keeping a tight watch on “ING Direct on Technorati”.
Edit: the press release (free registration required)
(Disclaimer: I am employed with a subsidiary of ING Group, but not with ING Direct)
Technorati tag(s): ING Direct, ING, ING Group, Viral, Viral marketing, Bank, YouTube
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posted Sep 15, 09:56 pm on Sep 15, 2006 |
category: Marketing
/ Social software