To prove that AIB, Ireland’s largest bank was actively helping small businesses, we took their traditional media and production budget and gave it to small businesses to make their own commercials and get them on air.

The Irish banks were blamed for the worst financial catastrophe in the history of the state.

On top of this, the media and general public felt that they were doing nothing to help the situation by cutting off credit to small businesses.

Our client, AIB, Ireland’s largest bank, wanted to run a campaign telling people that, in fact, they were supporting business.

However, spending the budget on a campaign to tell people AIB were lending just didn’t feel right.

So, we simply re-directed the budgets.

Instead of one generic execution telling people AIB were supporting Small businesses, we wanted 15 different ads for 15 different small companies actually showing we were supporting small businesses.

To keep costs down, over a period of just 20 days Rothco developed propositions & insights, wrote scripts, recced locations, sourced local props, found supporting cast, shot footage, mixed sound, edited and graded 10 individual ads for each small business.

To launch the campaign, TV spots were bought on national TV for each small business. However, we then helped and encouraged each small business to share their new film through Twitter feeds, Facebook pages and other social media platforms. Thereby gaining more media coverage.

The campaign was successful on 2 very different levels.

After airing a TV campaign they would ordinarily not be able to afford,

each and every business had a sales increase.

For example; Murphy’s Ice Cream caught the attention of the national supermarket buyers and received a listing for their products. Hurlog had their busiest Christmas ever. Celtic pure mineral water got listing in Irish and UK supermarkets, thereby increasing exports.

Secondly AIB received their first positive PR coverage since the economic crisis. People wrote to national newspapers to compliment the bank on the initiative. And the power of the campaign began to filter into their brand tracking scores. Overnight there was a 37% increase in consumers who saw the bank as being supportive to small business (Source: RedC Research May 2012)