Situation:

Every year, 16 billion euros of criminal money is laundered in the Netherlands. Money from drug trading, human trafficking and terrorism flows into the legitimate economy via banks like ABN AMRO. Only 1% of this criminal money is seized.

Several money laundering scandals were uncovered at banks recently. Rival ING was forced to pay a record 775 million euro fine in 2018 Since then, banks have to improve their screening of customers and transactions. To radically improve their gatekeeper function. At ABN AMRO too.

Brief:

- Create awareness around financial crime.

- Communicate ABN AMRO’s actions.

- Convince millennials (aged 21-35) to apply as a financial crime analyst.

Objectives:

- Business: 1,200 applications in 3 months (6 weeks campaign).

- Significant improvement in consideration of ABN AMRO as employer and employer’s reputation among the target group.

- 40,000 visits to campaign page abnamro.nl/darkside

- 10% click ratio to vacancies

Banks have a poor reputation since the crisis, especially among millennials. ‘Anything is better than working for a bank’. Work has to be meaningful, above all.

That is why it was essential to make financial crime tangible, by bringing it close to their lived experiences. A clearly branded, traditional recruitment campaign would not do the job.

We launch a Netflix-style short thriller entitled ‘The Dark Side of Money’ which shows the brutal reality of money laundering. The film deliberately contains ‘plot holes’: details which are incorrect. So viewers can test whether they are sharp enough for this work.

This layered solution draws attention among the crap from the web and high quality Netflix-content. And it very cleverly serves two purposes:

1. Make financial crime tangible and say what ABN AMRO does against this;

2. Activation mechanism: test whether viewers are sharp enough for the job.

During in-depth interviews and desk research we learn that banks are no longer a popular employer for millennials. ‘Anything better than working at a bank’. Above all, work has to be meaningful.

Conclusion:

-To be credible we need a promise and a story (1) rooted in our purpose and brand mentality and (2) which makes it clear what money laundering detection actually means.

-It is crucial to bring to life what the impact of money laundering is.

Approach:

A traditional campaign would not get the job done. This generation takes (online) media consumption and engagement to an all-time high and is very critical towards advertising. We needed an engaging form of campaigning, where initially, the bank is not revealed as sender.

Call to action:

-phase 1: ‘Watch the entire film’.

-phase 2: ‘Can you see what’s wrong? Help discover dirty money.’

-phase 3:’View the vacancies’ and ‘Apply now’.

We launch the film online, in 100 Dutch cinemas and at media partner Vice. Supported with a strong PR strategy, this immediately gets picked up widely.

We promote the film with short trailers on a.o. YouTube and Instagram Stories. With its own design and without ABN AMRO as sender. The sender does not become clear until the final minute, when we say what ABN AMRO does against money laundering. There is no call-to-action.

After watching the film, we pull the target group in further. With stimulating short video and social ads and via influencers, we challenge them to find the mistakes in the film. ‘Can you spot what’s wrong? Help find dirty money.’ ABN AMRO is now clearly shown as the sender.

Whoever has been in contact with the campaign or spots the errors is shown banners with job vacancies and a call-to-action to apply.

Business impact:

Two days after launch, we had already received 400 applications! Six weeks later the score is at 1,200 and rising. Latest score in September: over 1,600.

Brand impact:

The campaign has managed to really impact this critical target group and has influenced brand perception.

Exposure to the campaign provides an uplift on:

- consideration (+30%) and preference (9%) for ABN AMRO as employer;

- reputation of ABN AMRO as an employer (average +23%);

- general brand reputation (average +23%).

Traffic:

- 95,000 visits to campaign pages (target 40k).

- click ratio to vacancies: 40% (target 10%)

Likeability:

For a bank, it’s ambitious to score a ‘pass’, due to critical sentiment. Especially among young people! The average score for the videos (7.1) is much higher than the benchmark (6.1).

Impressions:

37,197,000

12,975,000 video views

5,989,000 completed views

PR:

1.5 million earned media