Experiential Marketing: Will Financial Brands Join The Bandwagon?

Letting people feel the brand in an exciting manner with a view to winning patronage or strengthening loyalty is a marketing stunt product brands are relying on for new products or existing ones to make inroads or improve their marketing fortunes. Following the successful hosting of the FIFA U-17 World Cup, Kenneth O Eze writes that FirstBank of Nigeria, a financial services provider, seems to have opened the door for experiential marketing in financial services and wonders whether other banks will join the bandwagon.

With continuous empowerment of the consumer, stemming from consciousness and agitations, products-brands are becoming more and more dynamic, embarking on nationwide tours and campaigns to reach prospective consumers at homes, offices, markets and other public places. Experiential marketing has come to stay!

When brand managers brandish their product-services during well thought out public demonstrations, often laced with promos, it is with the objective of taking a share of the peoples’ mind in the hope of winning them over or making them loyalists, where they have been patrons before. Experiential marketing comes in handy with tangible brands/products. But lately, financial services providers in Nigeria seem to have seen value in the display/face to face marketing and are not willing to be outdone by physical brands in the struggle for patronage via the platform of experiential marketing.

Analysts posit that experiential marketing made way for Starcomms to position strongly in the telecoms market. It could easily be recalled that this telecom service provider unleashed its products and services in all nooks and crannies at competitive prices, forcing people to buy with demonstrations that pestered the minds of the people.  

Lately, financial service brands have come on this band wagon. Fidelity bank unleashed young ladies on the streets in an experiential marketing campaign inviting people to open accounts without deposits, offering them ATM cards in the process. The objective was to lure the people to experience the financial services brand, hoping they would stay hooked.

The big elephant, FirstBank of Nigeria (FBN), joined the fray in its usual big way, taking advantage of the just concluded FIFA U-17 world cup, hosted by Nigeria.

Despite its perceived strength and wider brand appeal, FBN raised the frontiers of experiential campaign in the financial services sector, partnering with the Lagos State Government by sponsoring a fan park at the Marina waterfront for the just concluded FIFA U-17 World Cup.

The Marina fan park project left in its wake pockets of excitement for the FBN brand in the minds of the populace in metropolitan Lagos and offered many soccer adherents who could not get to the Teslim Balogun Stadium the opportunity of watching the matches daily in a serene atmosphere by the Marina waterfront.

The park sponsored exclusively by FBN provided some succour for soccer fans, offering them opportunities of watching the matches without getting caught in a web of traffic after the close of business or missing the matches due to power failure in their homes.

FBN took advantage of the destination branding efforts of Lagos State and massive turnout that the world cup viewership offered to position its brand as the peoples’ partner and a willing financial supporter of the aspirations of the people, with a view to luring them to its banking halls.

Israel Opayemi, Country Director, Wisdom Keys Nigeria, the marketing communications consultancy that managed the initiative, described the project as a double-edged experiential platform for the bank in a city like Lagos, a destination with multiple leisure spots. According to Opayemi, “this was a 23-day unbroken engagement between FirstBank and a vibrant youth population in Lagos, on the one hand, and between the Lagos State government and the people on the other hand. It was an opportunity made possible by FirstBank for Lagos State government to open up the possibilities of Lagosians having diverse signature events in the embrace of nature by the Marina waterfront. I have no iota of doubt that the government and people of Lagos State are glad that a bank which has first to its name has made this possible the first time ever.”

The bank that supported the hosting of the U-17 world cup at national level opted to experientially market the huge population of Lagos to give them a feel of its brand of banking services while enjoying the game of soccer. This was done in a manner that placed the people’s and national interests above that of the bank, only subtly presenting the bank in a hard to be ignored manner, in the background.

According to Celine Loader, the bank’s head of corporate communications, “our call to Nigerians during the tournament was to ‘defend our national pride’ and the fan park complemented several other initiatives of Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola of Lagos State to give Lagosians opportunity to take social ownership of the game.”

Lagos placed the game in the laps of the people inviting them to “own the game”  socially and economically. Loader said this attracted her bank. “This initiative with a slant of appeal to the youth affirms the claim that FirstBank has remained an every generation bank since 1894 by staying relevant to the needs and aspirations of the people.”

FBN through the fan park initiative moved to increase its customer base by “stirring the youth towards a common cause of social cohesion and networking opportunities which the fan park exemplified,” according to Loader.

Loader expressed satisfaction with the success of the experiential marketing efforts of her bank. Her words: “We savour the opportunity this partnership with the state government offered us as a banking institution to position our brand before a captive market populated by 11,692 people during the tournament and we are above all proud it offered us an opportunity to again give something back to the society.”

At the just concluded Lagos International Trade Fair, many financial brands hawked banking and financial services freely. Afribank Nigeria had a full blown branch office for the benefit of the public at the fair. Its officers rendered courteous services to the public, laying emphasis that that was the bank’s standard. The general impression and message is that the public expecting quality financial services, could walk into the halls of Afribank, based on what they experienced at the fair.

The bank opened accounts for interested people with zero deposit, while rendering other financial services at reduced charges  a kind of promo. Moshood Isamotu, the bank’s corporate affairs manager lauds the effort, saying it was successful. The bank successfully lured many people to start banking relationships with the zero account opening strategy. Isamotu in celebrating the success of the experiential marketing effort, claims the bank had a strong showing at the fair because its stand was “equipped with robust information technology at the fair ground which enabled it to offer smooth services to customers and visitors,” thus swaying people to seek banking relationships with the bank.  

Presently, Afribank has moved to another international trade fair holding in the northern part of Nigeria, hoping to replicate the success recorded at the Lagos fair.

With Nigerian brands known to have the penchant of towing the lines of success, it is left to be seen how many other financial brands that will follow in the footsteps of these banks.