Banks in the UK are either big and nasty or small and unproven. Nationwide is the credible other choice, having the scale and expertise of the big banks but with a fundamental difference that informs everything it does. As a building society, Nationwide shares its profits with its members and because of this puts their customers first. This work challenges the category by demonstrating how we behave differently from our rivals, promising to keep branches open when every other bank is closing them. Not only is the message itself challenging, the work is inherently challenging with its use of character and satire.

In this commercial for Nationwide, a fictional CEO of a rival bank only has eyes for profit margin. Customers are way down on his list of priorities. So, when asked about cutbacks, he offers to close some more branches and mocks the needs of customers and beltittles the importance of face to face service. His Executive Assistant tells him that Nationwide are keeping their branches open, to which the Boss says "we're not Nationwide, we’re nothing like them”.

We saw unprecedented uplifts in brand health scores:

We got noticed:

• Ad Awareness rocketed with almost a threefold increase, hitting 25.7% in Nov vs. 9.5% in Jan.

• This leap took us from 4th to 1st place in our competitive set, with scores more than 100% ahead of our closest competitor.

We got talked about:

• People hearing positive things also doubled, to 34% vs. 17% in Jan.

We sparked more positive feeling:

• Positive Impression of the brand increased +24%, from 25.4% in Jan to 31.4% in Nov.

• This score increased even more, +35% for previous rejectors of the brand.

More people wanted to choose us:

• Purchase Intent – brand you are most likely to take out a financial product with increased +37% .

• We influenced 2 million more people to say they would choose Nationwide as their first choice.

Source: Wavemaker analysis of YouGov Brand Index data