With COVID causing rolling lockdowns and border closures in early 2020, no one knew what was ahead. Uncertainty meant people stopped spending.

And this led to 40% of small businesses experiencing a revenue decrease. Business confidence was rattled and with many SMEs in survival mode, NAB wanted to show its support.

NAB was impacted more than the other major banks thanks to the size and importance of its business banking. NAB’s biggest competitor, CBA enjoy 57% share of market voice so when they stated publicly their intent to become Australia’s leading business bank, NAB had to act.

With our clients having to think their way out of crisis creatively, we needed to follow suit. Doing so gave us a huge amount of empathy. We realised pretty quickly that creativity is what will get us all out of here and that in this economy, ideas are worth more than money.

NAB has always understood that there are more important things in life than money. The idea was born of an engaging business truth: Ideas are the driving force of business and business owners are creative people motivated by their ideas. We get that to many business customers, ideas are what matter most: and that money is simply there to make them happen.

The campaign celebrates the creativity of business owners and their heightened ability to see opportunities that others don’t. With their creativity and the expertise of NAB they can ‘Make Ideas More’.

We were keen to go beyond “business” stereotypes. Our approach was to show the raw ingredients of an idea, those things which go in to making a business idea ‘more’. This campaign reframes who we understand business owners to be, giving us a new strategic entry point when talking to customers, whatever stage their business is at.

To earn SMEs’ trust, NAB needed a deeper insight into the endeavour involved in starting and running a small business.

The uncertainty of the pandemic may have heightened anxiety but it also showed how creative business owners can be: 64% of them pivoted their operations in order to survive through lockdown.

To imagine something that wasn’t there before or to generate change in something that already exists is a remarkable skill. Though many SMEs might not even recognise this in themselves or their companies, NAB realised that creativity lies at the heart of business.

NAB doesn’t see hundreds of thousands of SMEs, it sees people who have followed through with an idea and worked hard to make it a reality.

Ideas are what drives business, and NAB’s sees its role as helping SMEs make more of their ideas. It’s time to acknowledge their creativity and the ideas that drive them.

To bring the campaign to life, we filmed a series of bold images of varied and target SMEs at work. Using a split screen, we juxtaposed two contrasting businesses in every frame. Drama was created by the two shots in each frame cleverly mirroring one another; for example fencing posts would be smashed into the ground on the left hand frame while acupuncture needles would be inserted to a foot on the right. The mirroring of these shots created a mesmerising balance.

Shooting these required considerable expertise to ensure that the actions in both frames balanced one another with their framing, speed and visual content. We also needed precision editing and artworking to ensure that the two shots knitted together seamlessly.

The end result is beautifully engaging film and photography, optimistic, distinctive music and is a highly creative way of celebrating the range of our business customers- and their creativity.

Our primary Business objective was to return NAB business banking to growth. We exceeded expectation and are currently sitting at an increase of 114% on our target of 57,368 business transactions account sales. We actually achieved 65,367. Equipment Finance quotes went up 40%, 112% more than our target.

Our advertising has had some hugely satisfying results. Overall trust in NAB increased 67%. Recognition of NAB as ‘a bank that does the right thing’ increased 57% for customers and a staggering 120% for non-customers. Recognition of NAB as ‘a bank that makes customers feel valued’ increased by 73% for customers and 121% for non-customers.

With total costs of $7.78 million ($6.6 million in media / $1.18million for creative and production) the campaign generated an ROI of 7.32x. With a peak campaign recognition of 54%, a consideration uplift of 14% amongst customers and 19% amongst non-customers, we have calculated a $56,920,677 profit.