In 2020, New Zealand’s largest bank, ANZ, was facing declining Consideration and new customer acquisition.

And Kiwis were doing it tough too. With rising inflation and stagnant wages, New Zealand was ranked one of the worst developed countries to live on the planet.

Losing relevance and market share, ANZ needed to reconnect with Kiwis by starting a new conversation about money.

Leveraging years of research, ANZ made a commitment to improve the financial wellbeing of the entire nation.

While we recognised we couldn’t fix the nation’s financial issues overnight, we could provide Kiwis with tips, tools and tricks to help relieve some of their stress and anxiety relating to money.

There was just one problem we needed to overcome first: One in three Kiwis were too embarrassed to talk about money, with 60% more comfortable talking about sex, or even politics, to their friends and family.

Let’s talk about F****** started with provocations in nationwide OOH such as “when did F****** become a dirty word?”

From pizza nights to after-work-drinks, coffees, to work commutes, we then identified everyday situations Kiwis chat, and inserted conversation starters relating to money into them with a range of products, partnerships and brand activations.

• Money Feast pizza pop-up got people talking about managing their dough during pizza night

• Savings FPA (financial pale ale) got savings stories flowing in pubs

• Budget Brew Coffee boosted budgeting conversations in cafes

• Bleeped-out money lyrics in popular songs got radio listeners discussing finances during drivetime

• 52 conversations disguised as a deck of cards provided people with a year’s worth of material - one for each week. Every activation drove people to the ANZ financial wellbeing hub for information, help, and tips and tricks designed to alleviate stress relating to their finances.

Our strategy was to disguise finance as topics Kiwis aren’t too embarrassed to talk about.

We learnt that for Kiwis aged 19-29 (ANZ’s most at risk audience) talking about finance is more taboo than the other F-word. Meaning they’d rather talk about sex than money.

With that, we had our provocation: Two words with the same number of letters that could be interpreted in different ways. Finance VS F**king.

Once we had people’s attention, we knew we had to find surprising ways to initiate conversations about F****** every day. Traditional advertising campaigns were being ignored, so we used the Greek Trojan Horse method.

Partnering with local businesses, we dropped products with finance prompts into lots of environments where people chat.

We knew there wasn’t a one-size-fits-all solution so we created lots of micro-activations all over the country so our audience would see multiple executions rather than one blanket message.

Launched in 2022, Let’s talk about F****** ran for 4-months with a multi-layered media approach.

Guerilla media inserted our conversations into areas our audience gathered with friends and family to chat such as cafes, pubs and pizza at home.

We partnered with Uber Eats to launch our own pizza where the 20:30:50 rule of budgeting was incorporated into the box design.

We dropped Financial Pale Ale coasters into pubs encouraging drinkers to talk about savings, and our Budget Brew Coffee cups were available in cafes everywhere.

A radio partnership with NZ’s top radio stations encouraged further conversations on air and externally by bleeping-out money lyrics in popular songs.

We extended the conversation using influencers, showing their followers ways to have conversations about money. Once our audience was engaged we drove them to a hub where they could find more information and keep the conversations going with the ‘Deck of How’.

- Maintained #1 position across key Financial Well-being statement “a bank that helps you improve your financial well-being”, while competitors saw 2-3% point decreases

- Highest consideration ANZ had ever seen over the campaign period at 54%

- ANZ Financial Well-being hub visits up 98%

- 16,198 Kiwis visited the Financial Well-being Conversations webpage to start their conversations on finance

- Over the course of the campaign customer acquisition was up 34% YOY