ANZ’s sponsorship of the Australian Open sees the brand dominate financial services share of mind at the start of each year.

While its tennis sponsorship is used as a platform to promote a variety of product messages from year to year, fundamentally, the key objectives for activating the sponsorship campaign are:

- To drive positive corporate reputation,

- And improve brand consideration metrics for the bank.

It’s no secret that banks in Australia have been under scrutiny for their questionable behaviours. Throughout 2018, the big four banks in Australia were put under the microscope by a Royal Commission (governmental inquiry) into Misconduct in the Banking and Financial Services Industry. Not surprisingly, all of the big banks have seen significant declines in their corporate reputation metrics.

Despite being a 7X Grand Slam winner and dual-sport Paralympic Gold Medallist, only 6% of Australians knew of Dylan (according to pre-campaign research). His incredible achievements deserved greater recognition. And so we chose to put him on an equal pedestal to the one we’d put Djokovic on - front and centre of the ANZ brand.

Where convention in diversity advertising suggested we should tell the heart-tugging story of Dylan’s superhuman successes in the face of his challenging disability, we decided to disrupt the status quo.

Instead, our idea was to hero Dylan not for his disability, but irrespective of it.

So, we portrayed Dylan simply as Dylan, a cheeky, charismatic guy and champion tennis player - who just happened to be in a wheelchair.

Insight:

Disabled individuals are under-represented and inequitably treated in the media. In Dylan’s own words, he never saw anyone like himself on TV when he was growing up.

Key Message:

ANZ’s organisational purpose is ‘to help individuals and communities to thrive’. If the 1 in 5 Australians with a disability are to thrive, then seeing diverse individuals like themselves, not just being represented in the media, but being recognised and treated as equals, is critical.

Hence, the key message for our campaign was that ANZ supports diversity and inclusion.

Target Audience::

- The Australian Open tennis audience, specifically ANZ’s key 18-39 year old banking prospects (a socially-minded age cohort).

- And the 1 in 5 Australians living with a disability (and their family and friends).

Come the Australian Open each year, ANZ practically ‘owns’ the Australian advertising landscape.

Dylan’s first message launched ANZ Fit Bit Pay (running alongside two other non-Dylan ANZ tennis ads). Then, we ramped up Dylan’s involvement and created an entire integrated Savings campaign with seven individual executions running across TV, cinema, digital and social, plastering Dylan across outdoor billboards everywhere.

Our advertising saw Dylan portrayed in ways no other disabled athlete or individual has been before. From winning big, to being chased by a tiger, to flying through the air in a superhero cape, we treated Dylan as we would any able-bodied talent.

Arguably, we treated him even better. Partnering with Nike, ANZ presented Dylan with his own

Alcott branded Australian Open sneakers, making him the first ever wheelchair athlete in the world to get his own Nike Player Exclusive shoes.

In January, The New York Times dubbed Dylan, “The most famous man at the Australian Open”. Where a year earlier, awareness of Dylan was only 6%, 1 in 4 now knew him.

And while ANZ can’t claim to be the sole driver of Dylan’s profile, Dylan heaps praise on the bank at every opportunity, describing the way ANZ activated its sponsorship as “life changing” for himself and the 1 in 5 Australians with a disability.

And the benefits went both ways.

Reaching over 162m people through paid and owned media, IPSOS identified a +46% improvement in campaign recognition when compared to ANZ’s work with Djokovic.

In turn, for the millions of Australians effectively reached, ANZ saw significantly higher Brand Consideration and Corporate Reputation scores (+45% and +250% respectively).

Furthermore, Analytic Partners econometrics modelling suggested a return on investment of 614% - the highest ROI for ANZ tennis ever.