ALLY’S TRADITIONAL STRATEGY WASN’T WORKING IN A ZERO INTEREST RATE ECONOMY

Ally is an innovator in the digital banking space, a disruptor that always punches above its weight. It’s a brand that cares about bringing financial literacy to customers. Traditionally, it did this by offering higher interest rates for better returns that will enable its millennial target to afford the homes, holidays and technology they crave.

But when central banks reduced interest rates to near zero at the start of the pandemic, its competitive advantage was drastically reduced. Suddenly, its ability to demonstrate it’s “smarter banking” credentials was dramatically reduced.

Our challenge was to bring the brand to life in a new way and reach COVID-quarantined customers as they adopted new behaviors.

VISIT ALLY ISLAND AND SEE HOW TO MAKE YOUR BELLS WORK SMARTER

Animal Crossing had created a new platform where we could prove to Millennials that Ally is truly the smarter way to bank.

Our strategy would be a first for the financial services industry. We would integrate Ally into Animal Crossing by creating a new island totally in line with the brand mission of helping people to be better with money. We would invite players to experience all the stuff they really wanted, great homes, swish boats, smart cars and even a playable golf course.

But the true centerpiece would be Ally’s “turnip exchange” where players could trade their hard-earned turnips for 1,000 bells apiece, 10 times what they would normally get on the “stalk market”. In short, we’d offer them better returns virtually now that low government interest rates meant we couldn’t do it in the real world.

GAMERS QUEUED TO ENTER OUR ISLAND

Ally partnered with key influencer KangGaming to demonstrate his interactions with Ally Island on the livestream platform Twitch. A regular player, Kang toured the island and regaled his followers with personal stories about Ally and how the bank had helped him and his wife achieve financial freedom. He also explained just how much better the Ally exchange rate for Turnips to Bells was than the “stalk market”.

His stream hit the top 10 most-watched on Twitch, backed up by paid digital amplification across gamer-friendly sites such as Reddit and Wired. On Reddit we took over the gaming section, driving interested audiences to a dedicated page on how to visit.

These targeted messages drew a massive crowd. On the day of launch there was so much demand that the island had to be shut down temporarily as gamers waited hours in a digital queue.

ANIMAL CROSSING PLAYERS LOVED THE ALLY ISLAND EXPERIENCE

By the end of the first week, 125,000 players had Ally Island.

Our campaign generated more than 355 million earned media impressions and the integration featured in nine business/consumer articles, including Fortune, and 17 gaming articles such as The Flick, GeekFeud and Happy Gamer.

Our Twitch livestreams with “KangGaming” hit at 18k concurrent viewers (significantly higher than his normal audience) and smashed industry benchmarks by 18%. Reddit posts and takeovers had a CTR 44% above benchmarks.

Across Social, we earned a 244% increase in social mentions and delivered a clear spike in sentiment, resulting in a 20-point increase in RMI post-launch (our bespoke “remarkability/talkability” metric developed for Ally).

Our work shows a direct correlation between RMI and business results and the campaign delivered a 320% spike in account openings, up 280% among existing customers and 300% among those new to Ally.